Do you know the way to San Jose? (How ‘bout Birmingham?)

By: John Ottley

Kathleen and I recently made our maiden voyage from Memphis to Atlanta for my Dad’s 80th birthday. We drove. When we mentioned this to our new friend, Beth Gurner, she offered to give us directions to Birmingham, including two shortcuts, that would save us a half hour or more. She’s got grandchildren in Birmingham so she drives there every chance she gets. As it turned out, she returned to Memphis the day we were leaving, made detailed notes of the route and emailed the directions to me.

We left at sundown and were going to get to Atlanta six hours later so we were glad for the shortcuts and did NOT want to waste any time getting lost. So, even with our GPS, we paid close attention to Beth’s directions-- even the right turn on the indiscrete road that was VERY EASY TO MISS just past the "Royal Church Chapel" just before a big green road sign… that says Corinth and Olive Branch on it, about 8.5 miles out Highway 72. We also drove the speed limit (on this stretch anyway) because she warned us: DURING THIS STRETCH, YOU WILL WANT TO WATCH THE SPEED LIMIT SIGNS CAREFULLY. CHANGES FROM 40 TO 50 TO 55… DO THE SAME WHEN YOU RETURN. LOTS OF TICKETS GIVEN HERE.

Someone who’d “been there and done that” countless times told us how to get where we wanted to go. We followed her directions closely and got to Birmingham with nary a wrong turn.

I know life doesn’t always work this way. I know we can learn good lessons from losing our way but… we have been given some very clear “directions” by One who claimed to be The Way. Who are we and what are we doing here? What really matters? Do we matter? Who’s really well off? What makes us happy? Who should we trust? How can we be “good”? How can we change?

We’ve been given directions. Are we paying attention?