“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose
You?ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know.
You?ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act. Just
never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up
your right foot with your left.
And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)
Kid, you?ll move mountains!
You’re off to Great
Places! Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!”
So wise Dr. Seuss, maybe that’s why you are a doctor. I remember this story (Oh, the places you’ll go!) being read at my high school graduation; well bits and pieces of it anyways. I look back and realize just how little I knew about what I was going to encounter as life goes on. But, that’s the awesome thing about life you don’t know where it is going to take you. Which at times is scary and hard, mysterious yet you are able to learn so much. We need direction each and every step we take, to us it may seem like the biggest step because we end up placing all our trust in the unknown, or the unseen but that’s why its called faith.
Faith that God is going to pull through each and every time and that he guides our steps. I think though sometimes I’m like “God I need your direction, show me, tell me something please!?” Yet it seems like all I hear is silence….
Really this supposed “silence” is really just me being a selective hearer; I only hear the things that I want to, that take me down the road that I feel is best for me.
Wait hold up a second…what I want, what I feel, what I think…hmmm yeah that’s not the right direction at all. So many times I find myself leading me when really I should be letting go of the steering wheel and as Carrie Underwood says let “Jesus take the wheel…”
The fact that I am choosing the things from God that I want to hear, it makes me wonder if he doesn’t think I’m going a little deaf. God has wired us and used a combination of our hearts and His truths to move ourselves in a certain direction. The thing that I am learning while on the Race is that rather than spending time wondering why I don’t hear audible voices, I just try to listen harder with my heart.
God doesn’t talk to me in an audible voice because he isn’t a human; he’s God! We humans are limited and God isn’t limited at all. He can communicate with us and to us any way he wants to at any time he wants to; through other people, an uncomfortable sense, a feeling of joy, goose bumps, a new found talent, or an appreciation we acquired over time; it doesn’t need to be a mystical thing!
I have started to wonder if all those times that I have been listening for voices, or looking for cloud shapes in the sky if I’ve missed the whisper of God’s creation, somehow thinking that its a lesser form of communication.
The Bible says that right now we only know “in part” and that one day, after we are gone, we’ll know “in full.” This means our understanding will always have gaps and gaps are good because they leave room for God to fill in the spaces. We don’t always know where God is going or what to expect along the way, but I think direction is the point, the part, and the whole of it. He wants followers, not just on lookers or people taking notes. Plus, I think God knows if I knew the direction he was going I’d just take the wheel back from him and try and beat him there.
Jesus points us to himself. He guides us and points us back to the people and the places I’ve been drawn to and the hopes that have emerged within me that he has planted there. The “equation” that I’ve begun to slowly figure out for what in the world then does he want me to do in my life is this: my life loves, passions, interests + what God said he wants us to be about = plan for my life.
Like my communication with God, I don’t need to hear words I recognize all the time to know what direction God wants me to go, because there’s all kinds of other information I can triangulate off of. What God does most of the time when he has something to say is this…He doesn’t pass us messages, instead he passes us each other to show us his message. So the person who you work with, your brother or sister, your mom or dad, your husband, your wife, your best friend, or that person you just met directs you because they speek something into your life.
I’ve begun to understand that the way that God communicates to us is something we are very familiar with, its us!! We’re God’s messangers, and we always have been! We don’t get an audible plan, we get something so much better! We get to be God’s plan for the whole world by pointing people towards him.
So like Dr. Seuss wrote:
“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose
You?ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know.
You?ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act. Just
never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up
your right foot with your left…”
It’s okay to mess up, to be unsure, but the one thing to remember is to look around and see what God is telling you. It’s more about seeing His glory first to hear His heart!
“And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)
Kid, you?ll move mountains!
You’re off to Great
Places! Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!”
