Hide and Seek

Playing Hide and Seek

“Please, Lord, rescue me! Come quickly, Lord, and help me.” Psalm 40:13

Barb and I flew into Raleigh, North Carolina for the start of our vacation. We had never been to the state, and it was late. We collected our baggage and found the shuttle that would take us to the car rental agency. We were on vacation, so I decided to splurge and opted for a nice sized SUV for our time in NC. In a moment of mindless penny-pinching, though, I opted not to get a GPS unit for the car. What could go wrong, eh?

Nothing, of course; nothing went wrong until we left the parking lot of the rental agency. Asking where we could find a restaurant open for a quick bite before hitting the road just before midnight, the agent gave us some quick directions that I was able to just as quickly forget by the time I figured out how to turn on the headlights – which I didn’t need to turn on as they were on “automatic”. Who’d have thunk it!

Anyway, I quickly gave up looking for any sort of restaurant. Perhaps suspecting Yankees were lurking about the region, the entire area seemed to be in a perpetual blackout mode. The road signs were posted on three-by-five inch placards – printed with some sort of non-reflective paint, and the large markers above the roadway didn’t tell you what highway you were on; only what roads you might discover if you kept your eyes peeled while traveling upon that rain-slicked, unilluminated track of asphalt.

We drove for a few minutes when it became obvious I had no idea where I was, which way I was headed, or upon what road I might be traveling, so we turned around and went back to the airport. There, Barb and I switched seats and she drove while I studied and interpreted my Google Map instructions during the intermittent flashes of lightning and toll road cameras. Within an hour we found a town with street lights, an open motel, and a not-yet-closed fast food outlet. We were in heaven, so we holed up there for the remainder of the night!

We were in North Carolina for a week, and while we visited a number of sites and kept busy, I never did feel like I ever knew where we were. I am no Davy Crocket or Daniel Boone, but I have always been able to piece together maps and geography and find my way around – until now. I was feeling a bit embarrassed by it all until my brother in law loaned me his GPS unit.

Heading back to their house from the Atlantic coast, even the GPS got lost. Can you believe it? Even the latest and greatest satellite-connected brain on the market couldn’t figure how to get us from where we were to where we were going. Except for the part where I imagined us dying lost and forgotten in the rain-soaked wildernesses of North Carolina, I felt better knowing that I was not alone in my geo-challenged befuddlement.

Life is sometimes like that, though. We have skills and abilities, tools and technologies, and yet for all of that, we can still find ourselves lost and adrift in a sea of confusion.

I have gotten to the age where there isn’t enough time left to figure everything out for myself. When I get lost, I have learned to pull over and ask directions. Consequently, I stopped at a local speedy mart and asked the man at the counter how I might get to where I was headed, and he told me. “Ignore the signs,” he said, “and follow my directions.”

He was right. He drew out a map for me (ironically, on the back of my internet’s map directions), described the landmarks to watch for and, lo and behold, before you know it, we were safe and sound right where we belonged.

Once again, the Lord came to the rescue. God came to us in the form of a kindly clerk in a run-down pit stop deep in the heart of Dixie. Our God saves even those far away from this, our valley – and for that, we are thankful.