If Only We Would Turn Around! (06.28.05--Direction--John 21:7-9 )
It’s a funny thing about life isn’t it that when we find ourselves off course we very seldom consider reversal the right direction to take. I guess it is just human nature to assume that where we’ve been already was a good choice and that all we need to make things right is to make adjustments and not changes. To admit that we may have been on the wrong path altogether is often far too hurtful to our egos to consider.
Recently I lost my favorite baseball cap. This cap was the one cap that fit right. It was the one cap that had just the right look and feel on my head. I have many other caps and I often wear them around the house or outside doing the yard work. But, when I plan on going to town and being seen in public, there is only one hat that I am comfortable wearing; my red, Wisconsin Badgers hat. This hat sits on my head correctly. It doesn’t slouch to one side or the other. It peaks well front to back and the color just seems to go well with about anything I might be wearing; at least on a casual basis. But, for whatever reason, I couldn’t find it anywhere. I looked in all the right places for it. It wasn’t perched atop my office coat tree where I usually put it. It wasn’t laying around anywhere in my office for that matter. I hadn’t left it in the bedroom closet or hung it on a hook in the entry way. Remaining calm and directed, I searched for a new direction. Perhaps I had left it in my workshop out back. Or, perhaps I had left it . . . When all was said and done, I was left with a whole lot of perhap’s and no favorite cap.
There’s an old corollary; it goes like this: “Objects are lost because people look where they are not instead of where they are.” My cap was lost because instead of looking for it where it was I was looking for it everywhere where it was not. It was lost because something I had done prior to losing it lacked direction or purpose to begin with. If I had back-tracked assuming that I had already gone off-course, I would have quickly discovered that the cap was on the back seat of my car. It was there because I had removed it while driving and pitched it there rather than placing it on the seat next to me as I usually do.
Life is like that. More often than not when we
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