GPS (Global Positioning System) systems are a great way to get to where you are going, usually the quickest way. However, what happens when your GPS tell you to turn right at the next street and you decide to turn left instead. It still knows where you said you wanted to go so it reconfigures a new path to get you there, not necessarily the quickest, maybe not even the safest, but a path never the less.

It seems that God was to be Israel’s GPS in the wilderness. An often like the driver who turns left instead of right, God reconfigured their path based on their wrong turns. The good news, he was still leading them.

I heard recently that there is a certain kind of ant that when they get lost simply begins following the ant in front of him. This is fine if the ant in front of him knows where he is going. However, it has been observed that this sometimes leads to a larger circle of ants all walking round in a circle and eventually leads to death.

Followership, the art of learning to follow, should I think be modeled on the GPS system than on the ant system. At least if you make a wrong turn in life, and we all do, God can redirect our paths to get us to where we need to be. But, if we just simply and blindly follow the, say the culture, then we may in fact, end up like the ants in a circle and eventually die.*
Which are you a follower of?

*Inspired by a thought from Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham. England.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 2nd, 2006 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous, New Testament, Old Testament, Personal.