Please proceed to the route . . .
Please proceed! To the route!
Please! Proceed! To! The route!
Rerouting . . .
And then, radio silence.
This was what I heard several times during my family vacation this past summer. My husband, two daughters, and I drove from Missouri to the Grand Canyon. And much to the chagrin of the robot inside my phone (as we referred to the navigation app), we did not always stay on the prescribed course during our travels.
Between pulling out of our driveway and finally returning home several days later, we drove about 3,000 miles through seven states. For the most part, it was smooth sailing. My husband is a truck driver who had studied the map before we left, so he knew which highways we needed to take and all the exits we couldn’t miss. The trouble came when we arrived at our destination and wanted to explore. More than once, we missed a turn or decided we knew better or didn’t hear the instructions being read from the phone — and that’s when we heard it.
Please proceed to the route . . .
Please proceed! To the route!
Please! Proceed! To! The route!
Rerouting . . .
Sometimes I would have sworn the app was angry with us. Though I’m well aware “her” voice is simply the product of a computer program and not actually a sentient robot talking to us, the pleas to proceed to the route seemed, at times, exasperated. It was as if our robotic navigator was really saying, “Get back on track, please. I said to get back on course! Hello! PEOPLE. Are you listening? Turn that minivan around before you get lost!”
If we veered too far off course, we eventually got the silent treatment from the phone. We’d hear a click (a robot’s version of a sigh, surely) and then . . . nothing. We’d finally done it. We’d gone too far down our own path and even the maps app was giving up on us.
My family was so tickled by this and laughed a lot as we figured out how to get where we wanted to go. But it’s not so amusing when the destination and the journey are less tangible and more personal.
Sometimes the road to reaching our goals, to staying within God’s guidelines for what’s best, for “smooth sailing” seems obvious. It’s right in front of us, paved and pointed to by Scripture or a still, small voice, by mentors or past experience or even common sense. The best course is simple, straightforward, and if we squint our eyes just right, we can see the finish line from here.
But most of the time it’s not that easy.
Finding Truth in my phone’s navigation app was unexpected but so good, and I’d love to share more with you. Join me at (in)courage for the rest of this article.
