Signs in the Woods

You know that saying that says, “Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me?” How about the one that says “The definition of bring an idiot is making the same mistake over and over?” Well, shame on me because I am an idiot…but let me explain, unless you already know me well – because all of you already know I am an idiot!
We like to pack up and go to Grand Haven, Michigan on Labor Day weekend and visit my Uncle Roger and our “cousins” (which includes his kids and their kids and a variety of others). We play on the beach and at the parks and baseball and soccer and everything fun. Grand Haven is an awesome place. It is situated on the Western side of Michigan, right on Lake Michigan. They seem to cater to outdoor life in this town. There are parks all over and, of course, wonderful beaches. There are cute little outdoor touristy shopping areas (we have decided that all towns with the word “haven” in them must be required to have these shopping strips!). Plus, what may be my favorite, biking trails. This whole town is covered in biking trails. Many are even paved and wide, with little miniature stop signs and everything. It is awesome! I love riding my bike and so whenever we come here we bring all the bikes and we truck all over, all five of us. But, early in the morning, when my family is sleeping off the intense playtime from the day before, I am up and biking by myself. In fact, this has become such a tradition that I have my favorite places to bike many of the places we go and Grand Haven is no exception. There, just up the road from Uncle Roger’s house, is Hofma Preserve. This place has great trails, through the woods and, at one point, across a boardwalk through Potawatomee Bayou (I know I thought Bayou’s were just in Louisiana too – so cool). This is a huge marsh, completely untouched and peaceful. I love to ride a while, then sip coffee while I sit on a bench in the Bayou and pray/write/read and allow the wonder of God’s creation to kind of percolate around my soul and mind. That is what I am doing this morning.
As I said before, I have biked these trails in the past, but was so excited to get on them this weekend. So, I began tearing into the trails yesterday just riding round and round all through the up and down of the hills and turns of the forest. After riding all over for quite a while, I decided that it was getting to be time to head back home and tried to find either one of the two trails that would lead me out of the maze of the forest and to the road home. I couldn’t find either. I kept coming back to the same spots, over and over and over again. The interesting thing was that there are a couple spots on the trails where there are maps on posts that say “You are here,” with a red dot marked on it for me. When I would come to those spots I would stop and check out the map, each time leaving quite certain that I knew the way out. But, each time I biked all over and returned to the map, rather than the road! Finally, frustrated ad hungry, I layed aside one of the cardinal rules of manhood and asked someone, “How do I get out of here?” They quickly pointed the way, I followed their instructions, and was out before I knew it. But, here’s what’s funny…and pitiful: I did the same thing today. I rode around and around and was thoroughly enjoying myself and then, when I decided I wanted to go…I couldn’t seem to find my way out, in spite of the signs. (this is the part where many of you will stop reading and decide to read something not written by an idiot – shame on me – and I am totally ok with that, but for those of you who want to continue on here we go) Finally, exasperated, I stopped and really looked at one of the signs. I looked back at the woods, back at the sign, back at the woods and thought about what those kind people with the black lab had said to me yesterday. Then the moment of truth…I looked down. The sign post was broken at the bottom, completely! It was leaning against a tree! Then I looked at the bottom of the sign post, back at the sign, back at the woods and I realized, whoever knocked the sign over and broke the post did not put the sign in the right place! I had been following this sign and it was not telling me to go the right way – it was not true.
This whole thing really makes me think, especially sitting out here on the bayou this morning. I think there are so many of us who ride the bikes of our lives day and after day after day, week after week after week, year after year riding around through the trails, not even looking at the signs, oblivious to what’s going on. At some point we decide that maybe it’s time to move on a little, get on to something else, something bigger and better than we have yet known. The path is not going where we thought it would, or we are tired and want to get out. So, we check out the signs. We look at all we see around us…we look into ourselves, and we see and hear the signs. They are telling us to make more money, to get more stuff, to become famous, to have more sex with more people, to go back to school and get that degree, to run away to some kind of something that will help you have fun, live the good life, and on and on. So, we try it. We follow the signs and, after riding that path all over the place, the signs lead us back to the same places again. We find ourselves seeing the same territory over and over and always coming back to the same signs. We see the broken relationships and losses and addictions and our own lostness in our selfishness and we mourn our inability to read the signs correctly, yet we don’t know anything else, so we try a different direction on the same sign and just end up in a different kind of loss and pain in the end. We feel like idiots, shameful and lost. What we don’t realize is that the signs are broken. All the routes on the signs are not wrong, they’re just really out of place. All the routes, taken together, in the right way, lead us to God; The Sign. He brings perspective to all the others, the money and the success and the sex and the education and all of it and allows us to finally figure things out. If you are frustrated with the path of your life…if you would like to go a direction that makes more sense and is more meaningful…if you would like to start finding the Sign, begin simply saying “Lord, I want to find the right way, but I don’t know how. Please show me the way,” and let us know too – we want to help.
But there’s a second group of people that this whole “sign” talk seems to point to. This is a group of people who look and look and look for some magical “life plan” that God has for you. You are looking for the 365 days per year manual of what you are to do with your life. You are humming through your days, in the American lifestyle, and yet are frustrated with God because He is not laying the sign out there that tells you where all your future is. This has been me. I have felt a “call” on my life for a long time and have been frustrated at not knowing where I am going. I have zoomed through day after day, doing as near as I could what God wanted me to do, but always feeling like there was something more. Well, it turns out I was right, and I was wrong. You see there was more, yet there wasn’t…and this is not intended to be some kind of weird “riddle me this Batman” thing. The problem wasn’t that I was somehow not doing what God wanted. I was on the right path. I was fulfilling the calling. I just didn’t see it. I didn’t rest and have peace in it. The biggest reason I didn’t is that I didn’t slow down enough to see the Sign clearly, interpret Him accurately, and live life from there. I think that many times Christian people are so wrapped up in the lingo of Christianity and all we say about God’s mission and all that that we forget that the prime mission is to “love God with all you heart, mind, soul and strength” and to “love your neighbor…” We are trying to live for God in our ultra fast paced society and placing our guidelines and societal baggage on God. When all He wants of us is to trust Him, the Sign, today, and to rest in Him, knowing that He will give us our mission, at the pace He chooses. When we slow down enough to do this, we interpret the Sign correctly and we live the call every day. It is an unleashed kind of existence I wish for all of you. If you struggle with not knowing exactly where you are to go for God for the rest of your life, I would humbly suggest, to you and to me, that we begin asking Him to simply be our Sign for the next moment and that He would help us trust Him for all the rest of our future.