I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go. ...   Isaiah 47:17b

Some years ago, I asked a neighbor to ride with me as I drove from Lake Parsippany, New Jersey, to New Marlboro, Massachusetts. As we rode along, chatting away, we laughed about the silly fools who had been hired to put up signs along the highway. After all, we were heading away from New York City toward the Berkshire mountains but the signs kept telling us how many miles to the George Washington Bridge -- and the distance kept getting shorter. Then, the incompetence of the road workers really became apparent because we saw that the silly folks had built the bridge on the road going north

You guessed it; the silly folks were actually those traveling in the car rather than those working for the transportation system. The workers had erected plenty of accurate signs for us to follow. But, we were following our own directions. After all, we knew "our" directions were correct.

After seeing the bridge, however, we acknowledged that we should have paid attention to those signs erected to guide our journey. We should have questioned if it was possible that we were going the wrong way. Paying attention to those signs and letting them direct our journey would have taken us to our desired destination in a much shorter time.

Isaiah reminds us that, in our lives, it is the Lord who directs us in the way we should go. Don't ignore the signs!

Lord, I know there times when I ignore the signs and directions you clearly present. I continue to blindly plow along the wrong way until I am forced to acknowledge that I am following "my" way rather than "yours." Forgive me and please keep providing "your" signs and directions. I need them. Amen

Contributed by Nancy E.
Published Sunday November 20, 2005
Week 52 of Liturgical Year A