The other day I downloaded the “Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2012” game
for my ipad. I don’t play golf in the
real world, only with swoops of my finger across the ipad screen. And what I love best about this game is the
help you get in reading the greens.
Not only does the game tell you how much of a break there is
and fast the green is rolling, but before you even putt, you can tap a button
that will show you the line from where you are to where you aimed and if you’re
too far left or right, you can adjust before making the putt.
I wish I had this feature in my real life.
I was talking to Pastor Debbie the other day about how
sometimes I know exactly what God wants me to do in the far future, but I have
no idea how to get there.
And sometimes I can’t see the future at all; I can only see
the first step and—it’s a doozy.
Sometimes, Pastor Debbie said, all you can do is pray to God
minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day to show you where to go.
Even the Tiger Woods game has it limits. Sometimes you’re on the green, but so far
away from the hole, the game tells you it has no tip to give you. You’re on your own. You make the putt and hope you get it close
enough to the hole, that when you go to make your next putt, you’ll be close
enough for some advice.
Think of all the technology we have that promises us to make
us better golfers, better spellers, better drivers and yet every single one of
those technologies has its limits.
How many times in Word has your spelling been so far off,
the computer has no idea what word you’re trying to spell, it only knows that
you’re WRONG? So you keep playing with
the letters until you get it close enough to something the computer recognizes.
How many times has the GPS sent you through houses and
construction barriers?
All these things we have in life to point us in the right
direction and yet we still wind up lost or so far off the green we’re now “out
of bounds.”
There is no prayer button in the Tiger Woods game.
There is no prayer button in Word.
My GPS talks to me, but it doesn’t listen.
Only God can direct us, if we ask and if we listen and if we
remember that God often speaks in such still small voices it’s a wonder we can
hear Him at all.
The other day, I had a hearing test where they lock you up
in what looks like a good old-fashioned 20 questions booth with headphones to
block out all noise and it was only then that I realized that I have a ringing
in my ears. Most of the time I don’t
notice because we live in such a noisy world, but locked in that booth with
those headphones, I could hear that small ringing and I worried for a moment
that I wouldn’t be able to hear the tones that were about to come over the
headphones.
As it turned out, my hearing was just fine, despite the
ringing.
But never had I listened so hard in all my life. I listened like my life depended on it,
partly because I’m super-competitive and partly because I knew if they found
hearing loss it would indicate a cause of my vertigo that would necessitate
some unpleasant testing. So I listened
and tried not to get worried when there appeared to be long gaps of
silence. I listened.
Perhaps I should ask for the booth and headphones again, and
this time, tell them to just let me sit there for a while and pray. Maybe then I would hear God and maybe then I
would know what it is He wants me to do next.
Where is it that He wants me to go?
