Look Right, Look Left

I look right.  I look left.  I either have to wait or dodge.  Waiting and Dodging.  I’m not good at either.  I have no patience for waiting and dodging….  I just always get hit and I’m out (think dodgeball).

Recently I was in London and I noticed at many intersections, written on the ground, were the words, “LOOK RIGHT” and “LOOK LEFT”.  The traffic runs in the opposite direction of the United States.  It was hard to do sometimes, look the opposite direction, one in which I was not used to looking.  I wanted to do what was familiar, comfortable, my way.

While I was there, I took pictures of those words.  As I was going through the gallery on my phone and saw them I immediately thought about my life journey and which way I am going, which way I am looking.  I am headed in one particular direction, waiting when I need to and dodging when I have to.  There is a difference in need to and have to.  Needing to wait, to me anyway, means that there is something that is necessary, that has to be done like the grocery store, driver’s license, answers to my questions at an information booth.  Dodging when I have to means there is something coming at me that I am trying very hard to avoid: illness, broken plumbing, anything unexpected.  It feels quite often like I am dodging more than waiting, and I don’t like either very much. 

Then I began to think of my relationship with Jesus and how I often seem to be waiting and dodging.  He is telling me to LOOK RIGHT and LOOK LEFT when I want to do what is familiar, what is comfortable to me and not what He wants me to do.  Like I often did in London, I ignore the words, written on the ground in big letters that I can’t miss, but don’t see.  I don’t see them because I want to do things my way.  I go against what the Word says.  I definitely know the Word is there, but I don’t read it. I don’t need to, I know which way to look, which way I’m going. 

By the time I left London, I noticed that if I read the words on the ground and followed them, the waiting time was much less and the dodging was practically nonexistent.  I got to where I was going much quicker and sometimes ahead of schedule.

That’s the way my walk with Jesus is, too.  If I notice His words, really read His Word, looking in His direction, I’m not always hit and out; I’m not nearly as impatient with the wait.  I still have to wait on Him for answers and too often I try to dodge His will for my own and because of that, sometimes my life gets more difficult than it needs to be.  I get where I am going much quicker and find His time is sooner than I imagined it to be.

So… standing at an intersection, taking my time to LOOK RIGHT and then to LOOK LEFT, reading the Word so that I know which way to look to avoid as much waiting and dodging would be the better decision to make, the one that I will be striving to do in my hurried pace of life.

So, I am standing at a very high place and looking out over a city.  I wonder how I got here because it is something I never could have done before.  I know if my children saw me standing near a rail, up high, they’d be saying, “What!  No parachute?!” 

That is me, always afraid to get my feet off the ground and go higher.  It’s so comfortable down here, I can look up, and that’s good enough for me.  Yes, I see how high it is, I see how beautiful it is, I don’t need to go up there to see it, I’m fine down here.  So down here is where I stayed.  STAYED!

Through my fear I was pushed, and I do mean, PUSHED, to go higher.  I fought back with every BUT and WHAT IF I could think of.  None of them mattered; I WAS going to do this.  Even now, writing about it, tears come.

Oh, how many times I have told God no, I didn’t want to go higher.  I am fine right here.  Father, I can see everything, all of You, from here.  And then He pushes and I push back and He says just go and I have fear and doubt.  But the rail could give way, the floor could collapse. What if I pass out from being too high?  The buts and what ifs that seem so logical at the time do not keep Him from pushing and yes I do mean PUSHING, right in the middle of the back!  I push back so hard that I know if He moves His hand, I will have no choice but to fall down. 

He has His own buts and what ifs.  BUT I won’t let you go, WHAT IF you let me walk with you.  Won’t you at least try to trust Me. 

I prayed for God’s strength to walk up those stairs, go up in that elevator.  I did it.  I wasn’t happy, not excited, only apprehensive to go there and it took me quite a few minutes, or maybe half an hour, to finally walk to the edge just for a picture, to prove I was there.  And the experience was something I will never be able to replicate.  Being higher, up there, it was more beautiful than on the ground.  To stand and look for miles over a city that, from the ground, looks nothing like it does from the sky.  It is one of the best things I have ever done!  One of the best things I was pushed into!! 

This high place just happens to be the Eiffel Tower in Paris.  I’ve now been to many high places: the Cathedral in Cologne, Germany, inside the London Eye, the third floor hotel room in Amsterdam ( I always stay on the first floor or got a different room) to name a few. 

WHAT IF I hadn’t done those things?   I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to feel Jesus hand in my back, to hear His voice asking me to try to trust Him, to truly realize His Word is true, He will walk with me to a higher plain so that I can see more of Him, more of what He wants me to see that is inside of me.

I am coming out of what’s comfortable and going to a higher plain.  I am trusting God to give me His Son to push me to where He wants me to go.  I’ll be listening for His voice to guide me and remind me I can trust Him.