Have you contemplated the delays and re-routing of your travel plans? Until recently I cheerfully accepted them as safety corrections from God protecting me from harm. Often I was reminded of James 1:2-4:
Dear brothers, is your life full of difficulties and temptations? Then be happy. For when the way is rough, your patience has a chance to grow. So let it grow, and don’t try to squirm out of your problems. For when your patience is finally in full bloom, then you will be ready for anything, strong in character, full and complete.
However, during my last cross-country, multi-stops airline trip, I gained a new perspective.
As I stood at the ticket service counter getting rebooked for the final leg of my journey that I missed because of the multiple delays…I said to the agent, “Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be in the air at this time to my final destination.” I was quickly convicted in my spirit that I didn’t want anything bad to happen to the people on the flight I missed.
I checked later and found that the flight landed without incident. This opportunity, this out of the way rerouting, this accident provided me with a contemplation that “everything isn’t about me.”
What if God was redirecting my steps for His assignment?
I’ve long clung to Deuteronomy 11:24: Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours. I’ve prayed that scripture when starting a new job, when praying for territories in which I used to live, and general prayer walking around my neighborhood.
I may never know the exact mission for which God directed me on this night due to the change of my destination and time. I have reminisced over every encounter of that night into the next day with a God wonderment…”Was that the reason for the delay and rearrangement of my expected schedule?” Allow me to share a few of those moments that I believe could have been the “God Wink” for my feet to be walking in places that were not of my choosing.
- The conversation with the ticket agent and my aha awareness of compassion and concern for those who did make the flight and that no harm would come to them
- The additional tip money received by the evening and morning hotel/airport shuttle drivers
- The protection of the city in which I slept (I was reminded of Abraham’s effort to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if a specific number of righteous could be found in the city)
- Kind words and smiles to everyone I met
- To learn the lesson of which I’m now writing that may never have impacted me to the core of my being as it has because of this delay
As I’m now on the rebooked flight, I still wonder why I’m on this flight versus the one last night. But my thoughts are less on me and my safety, and more on “To whom God do you want me to be a blessing and a TRUE representative of Your Gospel of PEACE, LOVE, and JOY?”
Allow your interruptions to be viewed as opportunities to be the LIGHT of Jesus in a dark world that desperately needs Him as the resolution and restoration to Godly sanity. Relax and don’t take yourself, or this world so seriously. God has given us reason in His word to trust Him.
Be still and know (recognize, understand) that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations! I will be exalted in the earth.
Psalm 46:10 (AMP)
The LORD makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand. I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.
Psalm 37:23-24 (NIV)
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