Twenty-twenty is full of potential for joy and celebration, for grief and regrets. The last few days, I’ve been reading St. Paul’ letter to the church in Rome. He wrote of choices – choosing to follow God’s Way. As humans, we have the gift of choice in how we will live.

I used to think that once we made the choice to follow God’s path, we would be safe for life. Seventy-five years of living has taught me otherwise. Our freedom to choose God’s “Way of Jesus” just doesn’t work that way. Those big choices like marriage, starting a family, breaking the law, hurting someone do bring great consequences. My mother used to say, “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.”

It’s important to remember that life is composed of a web of choices like the network of roads that spread out across our nation. Some are superhighways, like Ontario’s #401. Travel is fast, the road wide. For me, those big highways represent the big choices in life.

We forget that those highways have an endless number of interchanges. We made our choice for sure, but next comes another opportunity to travel a different path. Sometimes we’ve looked ahead and know exactly our route. Sometimes we get sidetracked with a choice that doesn’t quite fit God’s way. And along comes another road, another choice until we feel totally lost.

With all those choices coming to us, sometimes every minute, sometimes every day, we need a GPS to keep us following “the Way.” I believe our best GPS is God’s Spirit. Like GPS technology, instead of forcing us to make the best choice, God’s Spirit copes with our choices by saying, “Recalibrating,” and offers us another route. Like the GPS, God never gives up. Yes, we’ve made our choice and live the consequences for sure, yet we can always recalibrate with God. God always offers an alternate route back to “God’s Way”. 

For 2020, my recommendation is to let go of feeling trapped in the choices of 2019, 2018, 2000 or older. Life is a network of roads. There is another interchange coming. Open your eyes, seek God’s guidance, and choose to follow “God’s way”. You can trust God to lead you home.

“If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31)