Detour To The Right Path

From the earliest of ages, most of us have heard to choose a path and follow it. Some always seem to do a good job at it, and others not so much. Just like traveling down the highway, some of us seem to have a sixth sense when it comes to directions. Then there are others, who no matter how hard they try, can never seem to find their way even to the other side of town.

Have you ever been traveling down a road, with your destination clear, and with proper directions knew exactly where you are going, and then a detour sign becomes visible in the distance? Do you remember just how you felt, especially if you were in a hurry to get where you were going? Maybe even the detour was down some old pathway that you really did not want to take, and even pondered turning around and forsaking the trip all together.

Have you ever taken the detour anyway, only to find the road you were taking was like stepping back in time, and even though maybe you had never been here before, there was a sense of peace and tranquility? How many of our lives detours are involuntarily forced upon us, to only find that it really was not a detour, but a correction to the path we should have been on from the beginning?

Unfortunately, in life, what many of us may perceive as the right path can get rocky and the road may even wash out from under our feet. Relationships sour, career paths fail, marriages fail, and people may disappoint, and even seek to wreak havoc in your life. I once heard in a song “If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans”. What takes many years for some of us to grasp is the path we may have chosen for ourselves in life, was not the path that God had intended for us to take, and many times, He throws up a detour sign in our path.

We speed faster and faster past each sign, to eventually crash and burn because the warning signs were there to warn us of the dangers, only we refused to pay attention to them. Fortunately, we serve a loving God, who only wants the best for His children, and if we will only listen to Him and take the detour, there can be peace and tranquility on the quiet paths He has chosen for us.

Many of us have had marriages, businesses, and other relationships fail, and then just as it seems our life has ended, God opens up another opportunity that in your soul you know was where you should have been all along. I firmly believe that God never makes a mistake, but we do, by not listening and praying for His perfect will in our lives. Fortunately, for us though good can even come from a bad choice, for example your children. Many have left horrible relationships and look at their kids as an example of God’s grace even in a bad decision. Others have left jobs and employers who are completely unappreciative of their skills, only to realize that job they hated provided them with the training necessary to do an even better job somewhere else.

While God can and does create detours to the right path, life could be so much easier if we followed His pathways from our youth. For those only beginning to develop your road map of life, travel slowly and pray about every decision and relationship. Pay attention to every warning sign, and realize that detour signs that pop up before you travel too far down the road you have chosen, just might be God’s way of saying I have something better for you.

Take it from experience; detours to the right path can seem like two different worlds. If you have ever gone from the speed of the expressway, to the slow tranquility on an old country road in the same trip, you know just how much different they can be. If life seems to be getting the best of you, pull out of the fast-lane and take the detour God has opened up for you. There you will find peace and happiness, which can only come from being right where you were supposed to be.