When I was a kid, one of summertime’s greatest pleasures was visiting an amusement park. Although no one had yet heard of Six Flags, the Chicago area had Riverview, and southwest Michigan had Silver Beach. We took advantage of both places as often as our parents would let us. It helped that even the best rides cost only a quarter, and on five-cent day, they were all a nickel.
Though we loved the roller coasters best, both parks offered all kinds of other excitement. One had a free-fall ride called the Parachutes with nothing more than a flat swing-seat and a limp chain to keep us from tumbling out. The other had a Fun House with a slide several stories high.
We also got a kick out of sitting on a flat disk the size of a living room that spun so fast not one rider could fight centrifugal force enough to stay on. Kids flew off at high speed onto carpet that gave them lots of pink rug burns — battle wounds, we’d say.
Something else both places offered was a Maze. Made with a dazzling array of sheeted glass and mirror, they fooled even the cautious. I learned by experience that over-confidence in a maze was a sure-fire way to go home with a goose-egg on your forehead.
These mazes were put together with their panels set at 45-degree angles, confusing us further by our own reflections, not just in front of us but in back, on the side, and “way over there.” It’s the perfect definition of “meeting yourself com- ing and going.” But we paid to get lost in them again and again.
Once in a while life itself seems like a maze, especially when it comes to making important decisions. The process can be much like finding our way through an amusement park maze: part frustration, part fascination. Just when we’re sure we see the way out, we slam into a dead-end…. sometimes with consequences far more damaging than goose-eggs.
So how are we to make wise choices?
By questioning God. But when we ask him, “Is it this or that?” we should be prepared to hear, “The other.”
God doesn’t do things conventionally, because he’s got ideas that would knock our socks off if he showed us all at once. So when we ask for decision-help, his guidance may not make immediate sense. That’s because he’s already way down the road in front of us, like a friend in a mirrored maze who we see but have no idea how to get to.
The important thing is that God isn’t out to deceive us the way maze designers are. His desire is just the opposite of theirs, not to trap us but to move us in an orderly way toward the good conclusion he has in mind. And as we trust his wisdom over our own, he’ll even get us there without any goose-eggs.
“Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life.” (Psalm 143:8)