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Wrong Way  

Bergen is beautiful. 

Like all of Norway, Bergen oozes with a rustic charm, storied history, and luscious landscapes impossible to capture on canvas or camera. But because Bergen is so old, its hotels are often cobbled together from adjacent buildings creating different levels and twists. 

For example, our hotel could be entered through a revolving door—or through an alley you might easily overlook. Once inside the hotel, finding your room can be equally challenging.

I kept forgetting that I needed to make a left turn off the elevators and then walk past the “ice machine” (about the size of a  Keurig—and rather than cubes, it dispenses tiny pearls of ice you collect in six-ounce plastic cups they supply).

To get to our room, you had to continue beyond the electric shoe shine machine, then turn right.  Then it was a left turn a few paces later at the window overlooking industrial heating pipes.  Next, you would make another turn at the double doors, walk down seven steps—and there you would find it on the right—our room.  

 

But here’s the thing.  I kept turning the wrong way.  Time after time, the elevator doors would open and I would head off in the wrong direction—or at least feel that I wanted to go in that wrong direction.

With so many epic fails at basic geography, I concluded this: my every inclination is to go wrong—at every turn.  A light went on for me the vey moment I acknowledged this painful flaw.

Isn’t the same thing true—and more so—spiritually?  Isn’t it equally true that apart from God, our every inclination—all of us—is to go the wrong way at every turn?

Surely Isaiah speaks of us when he writes, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way.”  And you’ll notice, it’s always the wrong way!  Romans 3:11 bluntly states, “There is no one that seeks for God.” In other words, our every inclination is to go wrong.  At every turn.

If there is to be any hope for us, we must invite God to be our GPS.  Time to humble ourselves and join David in his prayer:

Show me your ways, Lord,

    teach me your paths.

Guide me in your truth and teach me,

    for you are God my Savior,

    and my hope is in you all day long.

—Psalms 25:4,5

 

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Jon GaugerJon Gauger

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