This week I was driving from Tennessee to Massachusetts to visit my mom. On Tuesday morning I was in the sprawling farmland of lower Pennsylvania and began heading up into the Pocono Mountains. Rain was forecast but I seemed to be outrunning the storm front. As I began to climb into the mountains I ran into heavy fog. It wasn’t patchy fog but a thick fog bank that lasted for more than an hour. I couldn’t see anything in front of me, behind me, next to me, or above me. The only things I could see outside my car were the lines immediately to the left of me and to the right of me on the road. Everything else was just a whitish gray. I was driving on the Interstate in the right lane. I adjusted my speed and kept my eyes wide open and straight ahead of me so that I would have as much time as possible if I saw brake lights in front of me. With my peripheral vision I had to watch the lines on either side of me to have any sense of direction at all. That worked for a short time but I found that the lines to the right of me were not a reliable guide because they would disappear and change when an exit was coming up (which I couldn’t see either) or when a wider section of breakdown lane was there. I found I could only rely on the lines to the left of me which were the divider between my lane and the passing lane. Those lines were constant and true because they were placed there long before me for the sole purpose of keeping cars in their own lanes to protect against accidents. When I finally drove out of the fog after such a long time without any vision everything looked so clear to me and I was amazed at the beautiful fall colors I could see in the mountains.

What a great illustration of our lives! We are motoring along with the planned GPS programmed in and we hit a fog bank with no warning whatsoever. In the blink of an eye our vision is gone and we have to make immediate adjustments. As believers we will see two lines to follow. The line to the right is fear, worry, self-reliance, and second guessing. It is the choice that changes and falls away when we veer into it too much. It is the choice that is led by our emotions and it is the guidance that will deceive us. Unfortuantely, in the fog we tend to look right before we ever look to the left. We have lived in this world our whole lives and our learned default is to look down (or right) instead of lifting our eyes up (or to the left line).

There is a constant we can trust and follow when we are suddenly lost in the fog and have no vision except what is immediately next to us. In John 14:6NIV, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He didn’t say there are two ways or three ways or many ways. Jesus said He is the Way. We don’t need more than one option when we have the truth. Just as the lines to the left of my car guided me out of the fog, so it is with Jesus. In a world that is trying to brainwash us into believing there is no absolute truth, Jesus safely guides every person that turns to Him.

There is a truth in all of this though that we don’t like. I had to drive through the fog bank. So will you. We don’t want inconveniences, heartache, difficulty, or discomfort. We want Him to remove all the obstacles in our paths and when He doesn’t we often become bitter and lose faith. While we are lamenting our time in the fog we look to the lines on the right when the faithful and true lines on the left will guide us through the fog every time. Hebrews 13:5NIV, “God has said, ‘never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” Never. Never ever. There is no fog, no storm, no disaster, no heartbreak that we ever have to manuever through alone. Proverbs 3:5+6NLT, “do not depend on your own understanding [the lines to the right]. Seek His will in all you do [the lines to the left], and He will show you which path to take.” Jesus will always be our True North. He will never send you the wrong way and when the time is so perfectly right we will break through the fog and our vision will clear and we will see all the beautiful wonders He has prepared for us!