It was Christmas Day. John Rhoads and his wife, Starry, were headed back home to Reno, NV after spending a few days with their son in Oregon. It was a 500-mile drive, so they were glad they had a GPS device to help them find the shortest route.
Since they were driving their four-wheel-drive Toyota Sequoia, they didn’t get too surprised when the GPS device told them to turn onto a graded dirt road that led into the Winema-Fremont National Forest. About the same time, the snow started to fall. John started to become concerned “when we noticed that the snow was getting deep and we were over 30 miles into this road. We thought we didn't have much farther to go.”
When they did finally decide to turn around, the snow was so deep that they couldn’t get their Sequoia to budge. They checked their cell phones to call for help, but they didn’t have a signal. Fortunately, they had packed a lot of warm clothes and a good supply of snack foods.
For three days they sat in their SUV, cranking it up every few hours to run the heater and reminding each other to eat. The weather conditions eventually improved enough for their GPS-enabled cell phone to get a weak signal and relay coordinates to a dispatcher.
This is just one story of the kind of errors that can result as people rely on one imperfect source of information. There are other stories of people driving onto railway lines, heading the wrong way down one-way streets, getting stuck under bridges, and pulling into strangers’ driveways.
Geoff Sundstrom, a spokesman for the American Automobile Association says, “We've become so accustomed to relying on our technology that we don't often think about what might occur if that technology fails us. And with that in mind we don't want to abandon some of the common-sense motoring advice that our parents and grandparents probably followed…. I think it's definitely a good idea if you're traveling in an area with which you are unfamiliar that you also have a good paper map as well as a GPS just in case you do find yourself in a situation where you are lost and your GPS isn't helping you out.”
No matter how good your sense of direction is, it is wise to have a guide you can trust when you are trying to find your way—and that’s not just when you’re driving. Indeed, you face some of the most difficult decisions about which way to turn as you move through the situations in your everyday life. Do you depend on yourself and what feels right to you; or do you allow yourself to be led by the Holy Spirit?
As Paul reminds the Galatians, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (5:25). That’s the truth that leads to life.
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