It seems hard to imagine now, but it took me a good year or two before I felt like I knew where I was when I hiked around our farm.
The previous owner had carved horse trails through the woods and before we even built our house, I’d sometimes come out to walk on the paths. Aside from my ever-present, irrational fear of snakes, walking through the woods is quite therapeutic for me now, but it was pretty confusing before I finally got the lay of our land.
I wasn’t afraid of getting dangerously lost because I always had my trusty phone with me and figured I could call for help. I also knew I probably wouldn’t end up as a tragic statistic unless I encountered an equally lost serial killer or a wild hog in an especially bad mood.
But in those early days, I do remember often being confused about where I was and which way I should go.
Looking at a satellite view of our property, my husband discovered that three of our conjoined pastures create a shape that looks like Woodstock, Snoopy’s bird buddy from the “Peanuts” cartoons.
Joe still refers to locations as being in Woodstock’s head, tail or wings. For some reason, this has never really helped me get my bearings, but what has helped is discovering that as long as I stay on one of the paths and keep walking, I’ll eventually come out into someplace familiar.
We don’t always have that luxury in our lives, though, do we? We often don’t know exactly where our chosen path will lead. But we can know the One who does, and even when we feel hopelessly lost, God is well able to guide us safely through if we’ll humble ourselves, call out to Him, and allow Him to direct our steps.
And that’s just as true for us as a nation as it is for us individually.
Benjamin Franklin’s suggestion for the Great Seal of the United States—a suggestion that was turned down—was a depiction of God rescuing the Israelites at the Red Sea. Moses’ arms were raised to heaven as he and the Hebrew people stood on the far shore of the sea watching it engulf Pharaoh’s army.
Our nation has had several “Red Sea moments” in its history and in my opinion, we’ve reached another one right now. It feels like we’re impossibly, inescapably trapped because we’ve watched many of our leaders flagrantly disregard God’s principles as well as those put forth in our nation’s founding documents.
As the leaders of our country met in 1787 to draft the Constitution, a document too often ignored these days, they seemed hopelessly deadlocked. After weeks of contentious debate, Franklin arose in that “Red Sea moment” and delivered an impromptu speech that began like this: “In this situation of this assembly groping, as it were, in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings?”
Further along in his speech, he said, “I have lived, sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”
If you read Franklin’s speech, available online, maybe it will remind you, as it did me, that there is only One who can part the sea and preserve our United States. It behooves us all to call upon Him now to show us the way forward.