U-turns Are Encouraged!
Is your life going somewhere or is it just a repeat of the same meaningless activities day after day? If you are not going anywhere, you will get there, and be greatly disappointed with where you are. If you know God’s purpose for your life and where you are going, it will be an exciting journey!
I went to school at Young Harris Junior College in north Georgia. Not far from there was Bryson City, North Carolina. It is in the mountains and near north Georgia, north Carolina, and Tennessee.
A few years ago, a beautiful highway was intended to connect Bryson City and Townsend, Tennessee. It was going to be a scenic drive. Problems occurred when environmental concerns caused the project to stop. Even though the highway was built for several miles, it was never completed. It’s been named “the road to nowhere.”
It’s a beautiful road. The scenery is exquisite, the lines on the completed part of the road are precise, and it was built with the best materials. You will be excited when you start driving on the road, but there is great disappointment when all of a sudden it ends.
Now you can stay at the end of the road and hope that someone would come along and finish it, but you don’t have enough food, water, and time for that. Or, you can turn around—do a U-turn and get on the road going to where God wants you to be.
In one of George Moore’s novels, he details part of the history of the Irish people who had to navigate the Great Depression. People were becoming bored and discouraged because there was no work.
The Government decided to hire men to build roads. All of a sudden, there was a new excitement among the Irish men. They began to lustily sing their Irish songs. They were glad to be back at work again. But suddenly they discovered that the roads they were building led nowhere. They just went out into the dreary bogs and stopped. They realized that they had been put to work only to provide them employment as an excuse for feeding them. The men quit singing, grew discouraged, and started complaining about their lot in life.
George Moore observed that the roads to nowhere are the most difficult to build. For men to work well and sing, there must be a worthy goal in view.
If you are not going somewhere in life, you lose your enthusiasm, your strength, your attitude, and your will to live.
God lets us choose which road we take. There are options. Their initial appearance can be deceptive. Jesus said, “The road is broad that leads to destruction, and many take it…the road is narrow that leads to life, and few are those who take it.” (Matthew 7:13-14) Are you with the many or the few?
David said, “Show me the right road O Lord; point out the road for me to follow…He shows the proper road even to those who go astray.” (Psalm25:4,8)
Peter warns about taking the wrong road when he writes, “Forsaking the right road, they have gone astray having followed the way of Balaam…who loved the ways of unrighteousness…” (11 Peter 2:15)
Do you need to make a U-turn?
