The Voice of Navigation

               On a recent road trip we found ourselves depending quite a bit on our GPS.  Paper maps are not as easy to find, or as cheap to buy as they used to be.  We forgot to take along our Garmin, so I downloaded a navigation application from the Google Play Store.  We like to give names to those disembodied voices calmly giving out commands, and sounding a little irritated when I decide not to follow those instructions.  We weren’t feeling very inspired when we downloaded the latest one, so we shackled her with the moniker Navi.

                Navi had a pleasant American accent, easy to understand and somewhat soothing.  She proved helpful at first, guiding us efficiently around Highlands Ranch, Colorado, a community with many curvy streets that defy the usual grid system most American cities have adopted since the days of Benjamin Franklin.  She was inferior to Garmi (our sweet, British accent Garmin GPS voice) in some ways, though.  She never named the street onto which we were supposed to turn, and never gave us much warning about an upcoming turn, often making it difficult to cross over three lanes of traffic in time to enter the left turn lane.  But, she was free, so we put up with it.

                It was out on the open highway that we began to experience some difficulties.  As I drove along Highway 287/26 somewhere between Dubois and Moran in Wyoming, I heard Navi tell me to make a left turn in 500 yards.  I was sure I needed to stay on the highway until we reached Moran, so I was a little skeptical.  I had also learned that Navi had a difficult time telling a turn in the road from an actual left or right turn, especially if there was a driveway or dirt road in the area, so I wasn’t too concerned.  Sure enough, 500 yards down the highway I passed a National Forest dirt road on the left.  She didn’t scold me or inform me she was recalculating (a favorite activity of Garmi's), so I simply continued along a very lonely and windy stretch of Wyoming highway.  About ten minutes later, Navi warned of a right turn that was coming up.  There had been no highway signs indicating an upcoming deviation, and I knew the highway went all the way to Moran.  The spot designated by Navi as the turning point came and went, this time without even a driveway anywhere to be seen.  This happened three more times before we pulled into the campground in Moran.

                I read a while ago about people who have died in Death Valley because they trusted their GPS, following instructions to drive down unmaintained dirt roads in one of the driest and hottest places on earth.  The park rangers began calling this practice “death by GPS.”  People would get stuck, without enough water, unable to go forward or backward, and too far from civilization to be able to walk for help.  Sadly, many didn’t realize that GPS programs can work long after they are out of cell phone service range.

                We are constantly bombarded with voices giving us various types of advice, some solicited, some not.  The advertising world uses incomplete truths and faulty reasoning in their attempts to get us to buy things we neither wanted nor needed before we saw, heard or read their commercial messages.  Yet, we listen and find ourselves drawn toward their products.  Peers who are not tied to the same moral or ethical anchors as we are often attempt to lure us away from our moorings to pursue pleasures we know we ought to shun.  Shallow religious self-serving demagogues set traps to capture our minds, proclaiming half-truths as God’s will.  So many of these voices are subtle, persuasive calls that sound so reasonable.  Indeed, they often sound righteous, beneficial to humanity, good for us.

                Jesus proclaimed, “…the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber.  The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep.  The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice…his sheep follow him because they know his voice…” (NIV).  He also said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  Nobody finds their way to the Father except by way of me” (Reed paraphrase).  “The way” means “the path or road.”  If we want to navigate safely through the confusing maze of rough roads and dead ends we know as the world, we need to listen to the only voice that really cares about us getting from point A to point B.  It is a daily, even hourly, effort to filter out all the voices of the false shepherds, the self-serving “friends,” and the commercial enterprises, all of whom wish to lead us down their own paths to destruction.  We must make the effort, being ever vigilant to remain on the narrow path that leads to life, listening only to the voice of our God.  And just to make sure we hear him correctly, he has graciously provided a transcript for us to read carefully, over and over, learning and preparing ourselves for every moment of life.  The Voice will not lead us down the wrong road.  He will lead us into life.