By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer
I keyed the address into my i-Phone maps app and hit Start. Accustomed to a bit more verbiage in instructions, I waited for the AI voice to give me more insight after the first turn.
Nothing.
After driving a few blocks, I felt the directions must be wrong. Things didn’t look or feel quite right. I turned my Jeep around and immediately heard the voice telling me to turn back onto the road I had just exited.
Taking what I thought was a real chance, I did so and continued for several miles, certain I was headed the wrong way.
I’ve been gifted with a keen sense of cardinal direction, but for some reason, I couldn’t verify it. No road signs identified where I was until, oh—wait. Really? Am I really here?
Another ten minutes on an unidentified road, and I finally saw a highway sign. The voice on my phone was silent. At least it didn’t say, “I told you so.”
I would either spend the next half-hour driving toward my destination or I would end up out on the plains of Eastern Colorado wondering where the mountains were.
Twenty miles later, the app voice told me to turn right at the next road and to make a left turn shortly after that.
The app had been right all along. My innate sense of direction had let me down, and if I’d insisted that I was right, I would have been in Kansas by now.
I had a long drive home to think about how God often gives me direction and then goes silent. No addendums or clarifications along the way. I either trust Him to know what He’s talking about or I don’t.
I don’t necessarily like that, but it seems to be the way things are sometimes.
His silence becomes my opportunity for obedience.
Now, I would never equate God’s directions with the navigational abilities of my smart phone, for I have occasionally ended up in the wrong place because GPS or whoever didn’t know what they/it was talking about.
God doesn’t make mistakes. And when He is silent, He’s simply waiting for me to make the next move by doing what He said and not change direction on my own. To demonstrate that I trust Him.
How many times have I said, “Are You Sure This is the Right Way, God?”
He is endlessly patient with me.
And He’s never steered me wrong.
I will instruct you and teach you
in the way you should go;
I will guide you with My eye.
Psalm 32:8
~
Are you sure Share on X
A collection of postcards on a counter rack caught Mary’s attention, and she chose one of The Royal Gorge. “Do you have stamps for these, and can you post it for me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As Mary jotted a quick note to Celia, the girl retrieved a stamp and laid it on the counter. “That will be one cent, please.”
“Thank you.” Mary signed and addressed the card and slid it toward the girl with a penny. “Can you also direct me to where I might find fuel for my motorcar?”
At that, the young woman’s jaw dropped, but she quickly regained her composure.
“Your motorcar?”
“Not exactly.” Mary smiled at the obvious reason for the girl’s gape. “I rented it in Pueblo, and I want to make sure I have enough fuel to make it to my aunt’s farm and back.”
“Did you drive it yourself?”
Pride threatened to smear Mary’s face with a wide grin, and she reached for her own composure before answering. “Yes, I did.”
The girl leaned across the counter. “How wonderful! My father warns me all the time about doing such a thing, but I know it would be dreadfully fun and I’m certain I could do it. I can drive a team of four. How much more difficult could it be?”
Mary leaned in an equal distance, familiar herself with driving a team on the farm. “It is different, and takes a little getting used to, but I’m certain you could do it. Try the smaller model first. The Roadster.”
She could not have thrilled the young lady any more than she had with those words and she wished her the best as she left the lobby.
After buying gasoline at the eastern edge of town, she turned north. The man who had fueled her Roadster gave her directions to “the Dodson place,” as well as a quizzical look. He seemed about to say more, but she put the motorcar into gear and lurched ahead as his mouth moved. She really needed to perfect her starts.
Spring had not yet arrived in Cañon City, nor had it shown up along the mountains on her way from Denver. Aching for a touch of green, she soon relented to the wonder of layered buttes, red stone formations, and hills covered with dull bushes, more like short trees and grayer rather than green.
The scrubby trees eventually gave way to farmland, and Mary marveled at the cultivated fields and tidy orchards. The area seemed a veritable garden, but several turns took her to higher country, where miles of grassland spread around her. A different sort of grass, nothing like the fields where her family’s herd grazed back home.
As the peaks of a barn and house rose in the distance, memories of Pennsylvania faded, and she accelerated on the rough road, her body bouncing as much as her thoughts.
It had to be her aunt and uncle’s farm.
Mary’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. How surprised they would be when she arrived, in a motorcar no less! She’d not asked them to meet her at the train station in Cañon City, and she doubted they had telephone service. It was all part of the adventure, figuring out how she would get to the farm. But their steadfast love over the years assured her that she would be as welcome as Aunt Bertie had promised, regardless of how she arrived.
At a narrow track, a faded board on the fence corner said “Dodson,” and she turned toward the buildings. Excitement tingled through her arms—and quickly dwindled to dismay.
The outlying orchard was not as neat or trim as others she had passed, and no livestock grazed in the open areas. She rolled to a stop in front of a house that stood dreary and neglected, one shutter hanging askew on a front window.
Did she have the wrong farm?
She turned off the engine and sat in deafening silence. No chickens scratched in the yard. No dogs barked. No horses looked curiously from the corral.
Grasping one last lingering thread of hope, she got out and brushed dust from her sleeves and skirt. She patted her hair and put on a cheerful face, though she felt anything but. The front door yawned, and she poked her head inside.
“Aunt Bertie? Uncle Ernest?” ~Hope Is Built
Inspirational Western Romance – where the hero is heroic.
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