Remember that game Zelda on the Nintendo? I know there were many sequels, but I’m talking about the original one. Crummy graphics and a rough attempt at a 3-D world.
What frustrated me about this game to no end was that it wasn’t a side scroller. You didn’t necessarily know where to go when you first started the game. You had to explore. Enter a cave and get one tool. Talk to an old dude and get a bow and arrow. You were criss-crossing all over the map.
I think life is similar to this. We want it to be one-directional. We want to know every single obstacle we face directly correlates with our future goals. But that’s not how life works.
It’s truly a lot more like Zelda. You go over here, thinking that’s the direction that will take you to your end goal. Then you find out you were going the wrong way, so you have to go over somewhere else. You get frustrated, but you at least got a tool that will help you with the next phase of your journey.
Maybe you get fired and you learn to trust God more. Or maybe you develop a skill that will indirectly apply to what God has for you in the future. Maybe you make a connection that will be vital later on. It’s hard to see what will come from these detours and deviations from the path.
Following God’s will for our lives isn’t a straight path. That verse we reference where the way is straight and narrow…we misquote that. The actual verse says strait and narrow. Strait is another word for narrow. Following God is not a straight line. We will go left and we will go right…we will go up and we will go down. But God knows where He’s taking us. And He’s equipping us all along the way.
