Who Do You Trust?

March 12, 2009
Who do you trust?
Or Why trust God when you have fun gadgets to depend on?

I’ve been visiting my grandkids. Actually I was helping out while my son was out of town on business. One task was to get my four year old granddaughter to her language class. Twenty minutes away from their home. I had been there once but I had help from my two other grandchildren who were off from school that day. Now I had to try and find it with help from the Garmin I gave my husband for Christmas. For those of you who are still living back in the 1950's a Garmin is one of the gadgets (fancy technical word for I don’t know what else to call it!) to help you find your way around. I’m pretty good around electronic gadgets but the latest digital wonders can be intimidating. So there I was smack in the middle of a town I’m not really familiar with on my way to a town I am totally unfamiliar with. What to do? Well, I’ll tell you now I should have taken my daughter in law’s simple instructions. I guess they were too simple for me. I was scared of getting lost. So I booted up (fancy tech term for turned it on.) the Garmin. Then I figured out how to tell it where I wanted to go and from where. This was the first real test for me. I had used it but in an area I was familiar with but not in a place that felt like a foreign country to me. Off we went, the Garmin, my granddaughter & I. First thing it did was directed me in it’s syrupy sweet feminine voice to the freeway. NO, I did not want to go on the freeway I shouted at it! I found out Garmins are not great listeners. There was lots of traffic moving at a breakneck pace. No place to be when you don’t know where you are going. I ended up on the wrong freeway. The Garmin was unruffled. "Recalculating" the know it all voice said. This gadget does have a nice feature. It will "recalculate" when you make a wrong turn and give you new directions. Somebody figured out that people make mistakes. What a concept! Now it had me on surface roads. But I was feeling very uncertain since it got me on the freeway in the first place. Still I had no other choice. We twisted and turned here and there and lo, and behold there was my destination. After school I decided I would let it tell me how to get back to my son’s house. What else could I do? I was even more clueless than when I began. This time I poked around the settings and found the one that told it NO FREEWAYS. Off we went. Twisting and turning our way back (I hoped).
As I drove and obediently turned when told to I thought to myself, "Here I am trusting a machine to direct my way. Do I trust the Lord this easily?" The sad answer is no, I really don’t. Yes, the thing got us back safely and in good time but reliability of these things depend on a human programming it just right and it being in good working order. In essence depending on it is the same as depending on another human being. Ok for driving directions. Not too smart for life directions. Yet most humans, even believers in God Almighty have a sad habit of putting human wisdom before God’s wisdom. I just pray my "Garmin lesson" sticks and the next time I feel the need to put my whole life in the hands of a another human being or one of their inventions I will ask God’s opinion first.