Only Connect

I wake up in this city I called home for twenty years, and after morning prayer and reading, after breakfast, after all the familiar morning routines in an unfamiliar house, I dash to the car and turn the key.

It feels a little like getting my driver's license after the second try, and setting out for the dentist's office--the dentist I had been seeing for a decade already, whose office I could picture in my mind but not for the life of me find from the driver's seat.

Yes, lost (again) in familiar territory.

I know the roads I want, I know the roads I'm on. How to make them somehow connect, to get from one set to the other? I can't recall for sure.

I do recall my mother as I pass the freeway entrance I want with no (legal) way to get to it. New to this same town two decades ago, she took that entrance and ended up driving "as fast as she could in the wrong direction."

We laughed then, wondering how our mother could be that silly. I laugh now, realizing I'm that silly, just like her, and having known the town for a long time, I find less excuse for my sillyness than she could claim. Far less excuse.

But I drive on, thinking that the same thing often happens in our faith. We know the roads themselves, but perhaps we don't always know how the roads connect with each other--we know parts of the Bible, but not how to connect them; we know how to pray in the morning, but not how to pray continually throughout the day or how to let our morning Bible reading encourage us in the stress of the day; we know how to surrender in one moment, but not in the next.

We know where we want to go, but not how to get there from where we are.

Or perhaps we travel a road that seems familiar all the way, yet we aren't sure why this road, above all others, is the one we need to be on. Still, we trust that our Father in heaven knows the plans He has for us, that He will give us wisdom in making all the connections we need to grow in faith.