This is a breakout lesson based on the devotional Seeking God: How to Receive God’s Best for Your Life. Did you miss day 2’s lesson and journaling prompt? Read it here.
As I wound my way through unfamiliar streets in Washington, DC, my Google Maps audio piped up: “Alternate route available. Save 3 minutes.” Anything to escape this maze, I thought, and confirmed the route change.
Everything proceeded merrily, until I missed my turn. Rerouting, rerouting, rerouting. Turn, turn, turn. After all this, my new direction took me right back to my starting point. I lost many more minutes of driving time than I was supposed to gain by taking this short cut.
Our shortcuts can be a quicker route to success, but just as often they steer us away from blessings.
The Israelites learned the hard way that taking shortcuts with God was a sure path to suffering.
God’s people had barely brushed the dust of Egypt off their sandals when they adopted a shortcut that was common among the pagan nations surrounding them: idol worship.
Here was the Israelites’ shortcut: Make a god to do your bidding: carve it, set it on an altar where your eyes can take in its whole being at once, and offer it tidbits to appease its anger or entice its favor.
This is a manageable god. A shortcut around the hard work of faith, waiting, and following the Invisible God through the desert to home.
But God’s ways have a way of being good for us: the way of trust, the way of patience, the way of grace and forgiveness, the way of walking resolutely behind God in pursuit of the Holy as we make our way toward home.
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
Deuteronomy 6: 4-5