GPS (A Light has Dawned)

 

I have hunted deer in the North Woods of Minnesota for 37 years.  Astoundingly, I have never missed a hunting season in the vast northern wilderness.  There may come a day when I am no longer able to navigate the challenging hills and valleys of the tumultuous topography, hopefully not until the day that I am dead.    

My affection for this land runs deep.  It began many years before my 12 year old maiden voyage into a deer stand.  Even as a preschool boy, my dad used to take me and my brothers into the forest each October in preparation for the upcoming November hunt. 

For nearly 45 years I have been navigating these lands, committing all of the ridges and vales to memory.  I know this land exceptionally well and yet on several occasions I have found myself in a position where I no longer knew where I was. 

On one such morning, I led my son to his stand while it was still dark and began to walk the relatively short distance to my own stand.  Unfortunately, I could not seem to find my regular trail and wandered aimlessly for 45 minutes looking for any sign of my trail or my stand.  My son would later express his confusion as to why the light of my headlamp was wandering all over the woods while it was still dark that morning.  In order to save my dignity, I assured him that I was just trying to trample down all of the brush around his stand to give him a clearer shot, should the opportunity arise.   

After working up a fully drenching sweat and finding my glasses fogged thicker than grandma’s mashed potatoes, I flopped myself down on the side of a hill, exhausted and blind.  By this time it was fully light and still nothing looked familiar.  I had meandered for nearly an hour on familiar knolls and dales and yet had no idea of which direction to head.  I could head south and eventually find the road, but I knew that I could not be all that far from my stand and so I resisted the notion to completely start over. 

At this time I slid out of my backpack, pulled out my water bottle and took a big draft.  Next, I dug deep into the bottom of the pack and found my GPS.  I powered up the handheld device and waited several minutes for the unit to lock into the satellites and triangulate my position. 

Once my position was found, I commanded the device to take me to waypoint #1…”Ryan’s Stand”.  I selected “Go to,” and instantly, I knew where I was and where I needed to go.   I was a mere 75 yards south west of where I needed to be.  A few minutes later I was in sitting in my stand, with my sweat soaking the ground below me. 

I believe that every human being has suffered this same fate…though in a spiritual sense.  I fear that far too often however, we never realize that the answer is there right before us…and we never turn to the proverbial GPS. 

In roughly 740 BC, God gave a prophecy to a man named Isaiah.  To this man God said, “A world living in darkness has seen a great light, on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned…for unto us a child is born, a son is given and the government will be on his shoulders and he will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God everlasting father, prince of peace….He will reign on David’s throne…forever.”

Approximately 800 years later this prophecy is fulfilled in Jesus.  Jesus himself speaks of this light that is fulfilled in him, but says that “people loved the darkness instead of the light.”

We have the answer…it has been given to us…we simply have to put our trust in Him and not ourselves.  He is the light…He is the way…and I am not.

May we come to see Jesus as the light and follow his ways and not our own ways this Christmas.