Three weeks in Alaska and I’m on the move again. Before arriving I was put in contact with Tom and Carla, a couple from the congregation, who were in need of a house and dog sitter for the greater part of July. I love dogs and as far as house sitting goes there is not much to do—it is a house not a child. So I met them and immediately fell in love with their dog, Toonie. Toonie is a very sweet, rather citified dog. She is super smart and knows over fifteen tricks and I think understands more human English words than your average two-year-old.
Yesterday I moved from my host home who live on the outside of town, in a rather secluded neighborhood, to an apartment complex near the main road of Eagle River. While I do not have the breathtaking view of Mount Susitsa, I am within walking distance from any number of businesses, restaurants, grocery stores, and the movie theatre.
Part of watching Toonie includes taking her for a walk. Her walks are just that—a walk. Toonie does not like to stray from the paved path and has a strict routine. I can see the difference in lifestyle between Toonie (my citified dog friend) and Jorge (my host family’s wilderness lover).
As I was looking over the detailed schedule of Toonie I began to think… which dog am I like? This is an interesting thought considering the following analogy is examining the life of a dog, but really, which dog am I like? Am I like Toonie? Set in my ways, my routine, comfort zone? Or am I more like Jorge? Interested in making up my own path and exploring as I go? Either way, am I missing the path and commands of the Master?
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| Toonie |
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| Jorge |
I’m amazed that every time I think I know what I’m doing, God shows me I’m absolutely wrong. And every time that I feel drowned in a sea of confusion and I have no idea which way is up and which way is down, I’m really right next to the shore. God knows what I’m doing before I do it. When I simply trust that he won’t let me go astray, he will keep me in check. Certainly I do wander off of the path every once in a while, but God brings me back to that path again and again. He is faithful in doing this no matter how far I stray.
In my childhood I never would have planned to become a DCE (I wanted to be a whale trainer), but God showed me a different path. A year ago I never would have pictured myself leading an adult Bible study, but last year at my fieldwork church God led me to do it. I never would have planned to be on an internship 3500 miles away from my home and a four hour time difference from my fiancé, but God led me to.
Pastor Steve, here at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, has a term for the Alaska ministry; he calls it “Organized Flexibility”. Organized flexibility is a great thing. God does not want us to be unprepared, or without a plan. It is good to have a plan, a goal, a focal point for the future but one should also be open and flexible to God’s plan.
Toonie, though in the beginning stages (I have only been dog-sitting for two days) is learning her organized flexibility. Instead of 5:00am wake up, it’s more like 7:30am. Instead of the routine walk on the paved bike path, it’s an adventure at the mercy of her care taker.
What is dangerous for Christians is when we are seeking God’s will but we think we know the way on our own. This is like Jorge. Jorge loves to wander off the path, go explore, make up his own trail and in return can get lost or have a run-in with a moose, or bear. I, too, find myself often trying to take as many shortcuts as I can and when we begin to take short cuts with God, we really start to run into problems.
Too many times my impatience has led to taking shortcuts in God’s plan. I, in my infinite wisdom, like to decide that God is wasting my time by making me take the long way around an issue. After all, if you talk to a mathematician, he or she would tell you that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. God knows this, he created math after all, so why does he insist on making me take the long road?
In my experience, however (and it has taken me plenty of tries to figure it out) when we take the shortcut, often we just get completely lost and have to wait for God to come bring us back to the path. This is much like Toonie or Jorge, who wait for the voice of their master after wandering astray.
Other times, we find the path again on our own and decide that everything is fine. As a matter of fact, in our efforts to reach the summit, we just saved ourselves a lot of time, or hard work. But in my experience, the ridge that we just managed to skip past contained the most spectacular view we could imagine and we missed it.
In addition to missing the spectacular view, I have found that often times we can’t turn around to look at the view that we just missed. No matter how much we may want to go back and see it, we just missed it. Just as we can’t take back the words we say or the things that we do. Once we’ve said or done something we can’t take it back. We do have the option of asking forgiveness but it doesn’t make up for doing wrong in the first place. When we do take shortcuts and we miss something great that God had in store for us, he is a loving God. He, in his wonderful grace, will at times, give us another view just as spectacular further down the trail. But He also usually won’t warn us. If we take the shortcut again, we’ll probably never get to see the view.
So how do we avoid the problems that we bring upon ourselves by straying from the path that God set for us? The answer is truly simple, do what God says and trust him to lead your life. But if it was that simple to actually implement in our lives, we wouldn’t have such a difficult time in the first place. So to really keep on the straight and narrow, we must have a self-sacrificing attitude. There are often times when we want to do our own thing or perhaps think that we know better than God and can get along without him. So we must be willing to trust that God knows exactly where he is leading us and that his way is better than the way that we want to take, like the trust that Toonie and Jorge have in their masters.
God’s path isn’t always the easiest way to take. There are some places that it would make much more sense to us to take the shortcut. But we don’t know the path, only God does. If we let him be our guide, he will take us through the tough places, but he’ll also take us to the most spectacular views imaginable. And that is why we must place our trust in him, knowing that he won’t lead us astray
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