The Route You Cannot See Yet

Anyone who uses Waze, the crowd-sourced navigation app, knows the feeling. You are cruising down the interstate when suddenly Waze tells you to exit — now — and wind through a neighborhood you have never seen. Everything in you resists. The highway is right there. This side street feels wrong.

But Waze has data you do not have. Its algorithms process real-time reports from thousands of drivers ahead of you. It knows about the jackknifed semi three miles up, the forty-minute standstill you cannot see from here. The route that feels foolish is actually the wisest path forward.

Obedience to God works the same way. When the Almighty asks us to take an unexpected turn — to forgive someone who has not apologized, to wait when we want to rush ahead, to give when our accounts feel thin — our instinct is to stay on the road we know. The highway of our own understanding feels more direct.

But God sees what we cannot. As Proverbs 3:5-6 reminds us, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths."

The difference between Waze and God, of course, is that Waze is sometimes wrong. The Almighty never is. His detours always lead somewhere better than our highways ever could. The question is not whether His route is right — it is whether we will take the exit when He says turn.