Rerouted

“Ladies and gentlemen, we were unable to see the runway lights due to low visibility and heavy rains so we are going to be rerouted to another airport where it’s safe to land.” Looking out of the plane window at the awful weather and feeling a little like Tom Hanks in the plane crash scene from Castaway, I just prayed…God, I don’t care if I have to go to Africa and back tonight, just please let us land safely. Well, we landed a few cities away from our original destination, but we were safe!!

It was interesting watching those around me who were growing increasingly more angry, more dissatisfied, more verbal in their opinions and I thought about times when that had been me. When I had planned and prayed for something and was moving along in life, but God “rerouted” me into an unfamiliar territory. What?!?! Rerouted?? I didn’t plan on that! Surely, God hasn’t considered all the factors or heard my cries…why would He do this? All the while He knew….He was protecting me, giving me an opportunity to grow and enlarging my capacity but I resisted it, questioned it and often times complained about it.

We pray to know God more, to experience more of Him but sometimes the only way we can do that is through trials and adversity. When all of our securities are stripped away and all of efforts can’t make a way, we have no where else to turn but to God…then, ahhhh then…you really see Him. You KNOW Him and you experience Him like never before. I’ve struggled through lots of things in my life and years ago finally said yes to following God’s plan for my life and in doing so it has made for a lot of unexpected changes and detours. Some of these have been easy and some not so much. It’s like navigating through a land to which you’ve never visited and being solely dependent on a navigational device to get you where you need to be. Well my current land is unknown and my navigational system is the Lord, and who better to steer us and guide us but the one who created us.

Without ever being “rerouted” in life, we can find ourselves in a state of comfort. This is a place where things usually go according to our plans and we rarely feel pressure or endure major challenges. While this is easy and feels good, it will never produce much growth. Growth comes from hard work, enduring trials, pruning and nurturing. What God has planted in seed form in your heart will never develop into your full destiny without walking through and overcoming some things. He’s chosen you and purposed you for something specific and to take the easy route in life and stay comfortable, is to likely miss out on His fullness for you. Submit to the trials and to the detours of your life, lean in to what He has allowed so that you can be refined by it and become stronger because of it.

Job 23:10, “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.”