Lost

August 26, 2019

What would a road trip be without an unexpected detour that takes you from urban bumper-to-bumper stop-and-go interstate, through a poorly marked trek through urban decay? The word ‘heavenly’ comes to mind, a word that was notoriously absent from my vocabulary as we crawled our way through rush hour traffic. Why anyone thought to call it rush hour is a mystery; there’s nothing ‘rush’ about it unless it refers to the spike in one’s blood pressure through the ordeal. 

A lifetime ago when Linda and I would drive from seminary in Chicago to spend some time back home with family, we had to go through Cleveland. They were in the process of building the 271 bypass around the city, and every time we went through, there was another detour in which we inevitably made a wrong turn that took us somewhere between 2:00 and 3:00 am through the worst parts of the city. GPS hadn’t been invented yet, so we had to rely on AAA’s city maps, Linda reading by flashlight as we crept through seedy neighborhoods, with doors locked, windows up no matter how hot it was with no air conditioning. I don’t think there was a single time we went through Cleveland without getting lost. 

Of course, the mother of all getting lost was on the move to Chicago. I was driving a U-Haul, towing our ‘66 Falcon. Linda would meet me at the airport with the boys in two days, so I was navigating alone. At night. I crossed into Ohio, headed west and making good time for three hours...until I saw the sign, “Welcome to Pennsylvania.” Three hours (six, if you count backtracking) and who knows how many miles wasted at 2:00 am. It was a long drive to Chicago.

These days, we have GPS. From the dedicated Garmin to the app on our phone, it’s not perfect (after all, it didn’t warn me of the vehicular boondoggle in Cincinnati this afternoon), but although the rain and traffic made it somewhat of a nail-biter, it did get us to our destination, for which I am thankful tonight. 

As a footnote, God gave us a divine GPS in the Bible. It even guides lost travelers back to the right path and home. Instead of “recalibrating,” it says, “repent and believe.” It sees every detour and works every time.