my family has a nickname for me. my wife started it and the rest of the gang has, over the years, acquiesced. to those who love me, i am known as Darryl 'the long way' Dozlaw.
it's not that i can't find my way around when i'm driving. it's just that i always think that there is a better way to get somewhere... not a silly shortcut that takes us through an alley and a farmer's field, just a more efficient route. however, for all my deliberation and my many alternate passages, it seems as though i am more prone to choose a longer trip over a shorter one 2:1.
so to quiet things down a bit on trips, my wife bought a GPS for me one fathers' day. i call it delores. no reason, really, other than that this device has a female voice and ever since i heard the monty python sketch novel writing i have found the name to bear silly, voluptuous connotations.
delores does a masterful job of directing me towards my stated objective, and at first i did exactly what i was told. after awhile, however, i began to disagree with her. i knew my way around this or that particular town, and was aware of a more economical route to the place i had keyed in. i began to pretend to not hear when delores would calmly advise to 'take the next left.' i knew where i was going and i knew how to get there, thank you very much.
delores would take each of my rebellions in stride, triangulating our position and recalculating our course, taking into account my own free will.
delores is a beautiful model of how God can take into account our free will and the decisions we make, all the while patiently trying to give us directions that will take us where we said we wanted to go:
to see the realization of God's dream for our life.
God never stops hoping for us
pulling for us
cheering us on..
God is lovingly extravagant and generous, but not wasteful.
he wastes neither our joy nor our pain
neither our life nor our love
neither our strength nor our song.
God intends to use all of us for the furtherance of his kingdom and he intends to do so by redeeming our respective journeys...
even when we are committed to taking the long way home.
2 comments:
Hey Darryl, That is a really neat way to think of it.
Because he does have a divine plan for all of us, even though we take the 'other road' he just recalculates and hopes we follow next time!
Great post!
yeah... all that math, powered by grace!
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