Windings

A little over a week ago I was flying along Botswana's borders with South Africa and Zimbabwe doing my best to make sure I didn't violate international airspace and get into all kinds of trouble for it. There is no wall in the sky along the border to indicate where the forbidden line to cross extends upward into the blue sky. The corresponding lines on the map and the GPS indicate that the border is very wavy and goes all up, down, and around as it makes its way across the countryside. Why couldn't someone have just made the boundary between these countries a straight line and prevented me from needing to change my course so much as I fly between airports? I crane my neck to look across and downward through the passenger-side window at the border down below and find my answer. Thousands of feet below lies a winding river, snaking its way across the otherwise dry landscape. That river is the borderline. And for reasons of gravity and terrain, rivers don't normally flow in a nice straight line like the border I wished for would need. They wind back and forth, and so did I as I followed along the northern side of this particular river. 

As Christians we often refer to the "straight and the narrow" way that we follow to Heaven, and there are a number of Bible verses we can refer to which talk about straight paths. But in reality it seems more accurate to refer to following Christ as the narrow way and to our lives on this earth as full of turns and windings rather than being straight. Certainly we must maintain the straightness of truth compared to the twisting of evil, but a straight path is one you can look ahead on for many miles and see what is coming. If you can look years ahead in your life and see everything that will come, then three cheers for you. As for me, I am doing good just to know what might happen tomorrow. 

As humans we want answers. We want advance notice. We want time to prepare. But life doesn't always give us what we want - surprise! Change happens fast. We really don't know what tomorrow holds. As the saying goes, "Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be broken." Since my arrival in Botswana there have been ups and downs with immigration paperwork, pilot licensing, flight scheduling, and so on that taught me to be prepared for the unknown and to expect the unexpected....if that is even possible. People have come and gone with our organization and life continues to wind its way back and forth. Doors have opened in one direction and closed in others. But as different as the path for each of our lives may be and as many turns as we must make away from what we expected, all of us have the same final destination. Like Ecclesiastes 1:7 says of flowing water, "All rivers run into the sea" so all lives end in eternity, either with God or apart from Him. 

As the windings of a river, so my life twists and turns along it's course.