Looking to the Instructor:

As this month nears its end and I prepare to leave for my preaching trip to Gastonia, I had a final thought that I wanted to share with you.

 

I was in my devotional time earlier this morning.  I was reading the Word, contemplating some meditations and spending some time in prayer.  In the process, I was also taking stock of my own life, which has had some twists and turns in recent months.  It has left me feeling a little lost and uncertain.  I realize some areas where my thinking has not been too clear.

 

It all sort of reminded me of a blind person using a white cane, starting out on a mobility lesson with the instructor.  Sometimes, I've been with an instructor as we start out in a new neighborhood, perhaps learning how to travel a new route, or even learning my way around a shopping mall.  After some lessons with the instructor by my side the whole way, the time comes for me to try it on my own, with the instructor still near at hand, but far enough away to tell if I really know the route and can travel it on my own.  Sometimes, I would do very well; but other times, I would get totally confused in such situations--forgetting a turn here, ignoring a clue there, and eventually feeling totally lost.  At times like that, and usually with no one close at hand from whom I could ask any intelligent directions, the only thing I knew to do was sit down on a bench or lean calmly against a tree and simply look to the instructor, waiting until the instructor came alongside me and explained what I had done wrong.  Sometimes in life, we feel overwhelmed by a problem, challenged by a new responsibility, or lost in a sea of grief or disappointment.  At other times, our lives simply may seem to have lost focus and direction.  In any situation, we need to have the humility of a learner, a little child, maybe even a blind person with a white cane.

 

It's hard for adults to stop, admitting we're lost, and simply wait.  How often we stumble along in our own false confidence.  How much better off we would be if we would simply stop, take stock, pray, and look to the Instructor, to God Himself, through Jesus Christ, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  He will explain to us what we have done wrong, and put us back on track.  

 

It's very humiliating for an adult male, in responsible positions of leadership in the community, the church, or the civic club, simply to have to stand against the columns of a shopping mall or sit on a bench, waiting for the instructor to show him how to get back to the entrance or the intersection;  but if I don't stop and wait, I can get even more frantic, more lost, and possibly even endanger my own safety.  That's also true in life.  If we'll just stop and wait, and look to the Instructor, He will show us the Way.