The Warning Signs
Isaiah 48:18
“Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.”
There’s a back road I used to take to get to my father-in-law’s house that cuts through wooded lots before connecting to the main street, but it’s an eerie sight now. The center of the road caved in about a month ago, leaving a gaping, six-foot-deep sinkhole under the surface, chunks of cracked pavement in the muddy embankment, and a thin line of yellow tape saying “keep out!” To me, that’s a visual for those prodigal detours I occasionally take in my faith-journey. And isn’t that true of you? When we follow our own course of action rather than God’s, when we obey the voice of our impulses rather than His truth, we end up at a caved-in back road with no outlet. And we can’t repair that street or drive around it either; we can only turn backward, go to the intersection where we got lost in the first place, and change course.
Christian, hopefully by reflecting on this Isaiah 48:18 warning at the outset of our path today, it won’t be the road-sign we read at the end of it.