TheDiscipleMD
A few years ago on a winter drive across the country my wife and I had planned on stopping one night around ten o’clock in the evening. However, around six the weather started to turn bad and despite my ambition to continue driving, I made the decision to pull over in a small town in Iowa, population fifteen thousand, and seek shelter. As you can imagine, the quality of lodging matched the size of the town but we stopped anyway and settled in for the night.
The next morning I got up early to check the weather situation and the forecast for the day was favorable so off we went. The road was clear and we experienced little problems throughout the day as we traveled cross Iowa and several other states on our journey. The day was clear so we could see the beauty of the countryside. What we also saw were a tremendous amount of trucks and cars abandoned on the side of the highway. Some looked like they had lost control of their vehicles and had gone off the road and gotten stuck. Other abandoned cars looked as if they had been involved in accidents. Still others appeared to have been left on the shoulders of the highway apparently discarded by their owners out of fear. All had a “red ribbon” tied on some part of the car, signifying that they had been seen and tagged by the highway patrol. My wife and I remarked that we had never seen so many cars on the side of the road. I recall thinking how grateful I was that I had the wisdom of stopping early the evening before and took accommodations that were less than we had wanted.
Choosing to stop early the previous night was hard for me because I had mapped out in my mind how far along in the trip we needed to be in order to reach home. But, for once, I did the right thing by not being too strident in my ways and having the wisdom to adjust according to the situation. I don’t know the situation behind each of the cars and trucks that ended up in the ditch the night before, but I can guess that they too had places to go and time limits that they had set. Sadly for them, as it turns out, stopping in Iowa would have gotten them to their destination sooner.
We have all heard of the handcart companies that traveled across the plains to the Great Salt Lake. A couple of them, the Willie and Martin companies had righteous desires to get to Salt Lake. However, against better judgement they left later in the season than they should have, and a tragedy ensued. Stranded on the plains, the snowy weather took the lives of hundreds. In retrospect, perhaps they should have been content with where they were at.
We all want to go places in life. We have dreams and aspirations, goals and righteous desires! All good things! But let us use patience and wisdom to accomplish those goals. Sometimes the fastest way to our destination is not how we originally planned it to be. Perhaps adjusting to the constantly changing weather in our lives is the wiser thing to do.