360 degrees | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: 360 degrees | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ed VanDeMark
08/08/06
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360 Degrees

Automotive engineers are generally sharp people and most of the time their creations get me where I’m going. Their vehicles come with a motor to offer relief to my otherwise peddling legs, a steering wheel guidance system and a radio that is tuned into something beyond itself. Both my Ford 150 and my Subaru have three mirrors, and windows all around plus a couple thousand other parts.

I sit behind my steering wheel peddling like a crazy man when a voice comes out of the air that says there is a bridge out up ahead. If I understand the instructions correctly, I should make a right turn soon. I need to make a decision. I can continue on my present course or I can make that right turn. I check my mirrors - nothing is overtaking me from behind. That’s good. I look out my side windows - nothing is new. It is just like it was yesterday and the day before that. Then I consider what’s in front of me. The voice said that there is impending doom if I continue along this route but everything looks fine to me. If I get off the main highway and take that detour ahead, it is bound to take extra time and I’m in a hurry. But if that voice is accurate…well…but if it isn’t then I’ve wasted precious time.

I have choices and they are mine to make but I’m a person that likes to know what I’m getting myself into before I get into it. Cell phone technology is great. I dial my friend who lives just the other side of the bridge. He tells me that the bridge is indeed out. The radio voice is confirmed but making that turn up ahead will slow me down so I ask my friend on the other end of my cell phone to send me a picture of the bridge. The picture comes in and there is a missing span, so I make the right turn and avert disaster.

I had warnings of trouble ahead and they concerned me but it wasn’t until I saw that missing span for myself that I made my decision. I needed a vision of what was around the bend of time and space. It is fortunate for me that I knew who to call on for an accurate vision of those things that I can’t see from where I am right now.

Friends, family, co-workers and even strangers are valuable resources that provide us with the information that we need to live successfully. We say that some leaders are visionaries and it appears that they are but in my experience there is only one friend that is just over the hill or around the bend from every decision that I need to make. Jesus sees the future as clearly as he does the present and the past. Without him, my vision has human limitations. Yet the divine most often uses human vessels and internal inklings to provide us with visions.

The radio said the bridge is out. My friend confirmed it from his personal experience but I’m a stubborn man that demanded a third source of proof. I would not believe until I saw it for myself. I pray for a vision but too often refuse to accept the visions that God sends because I didn’t hear a booming voice coming from a burning bush or see a photo inscribed in the clouds. Most divine visions come in brief glimpses, in conversations with friends, times of prayer or in faithful bible reading. Thomas the doubter and Ed the impatient skeptic walk two steps behind Peter and John the believers, what a shame.

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