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.