Course Correction Needed

S

unday afternoons are made for relaxation and rest and sometimes there is no better way to rest than to be among friends while watching a good comedy. A few Sundays ago I had the good fortune of doing both of these.

The movie was a parody on the space program and a manned mission to mars.  At every turn something went amiss and our hero, a computer nerd, always exclaimed that he had nothing whatsoever to do with whatever went haywire.  And believe me, just about everything went haywire!

Very early in the movie, NASA encountered its first problem when one of the lead astronauts kept crashing his landing module into the Martian surface.  He complained that the programming was faulty and the machine was feeding him incorrect information.  So, the powers-that-be took the problem to the programmer, none other than our hero.

During a brief simulation, the programmer discovered that the pilot had replaced the original programming with his own calculations.  This resulted in disaster.  Each time the simulator encountered the faulty programming it displayed a warning, course correction needed.  The pilot chose not to heed the warning but to use his own programming and each time the result was the same, a crash landing with no survivors.

Although presented in the guise of a comedy, this is a very sobering lesson for us as Christians and one addressed in the Old Testament book of Isaiah.  No, Isaiah was not a computer nerd and he certainly had no idea that traveling to another planet would some day be a possibility.  But he did know that relying on our own ideas and instincts always spells disaster.

He penned these words in Isaiah 50:11 and we would do well to heed their warning and take them to heart, “But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze. This is that you shall receive from my hand: You will lie down in torment.”

Isaiah’s message could not be any clearer.  When we insist on having our own way, when we refuse to heed God’s warnings or follow his leading, and when we step out on our own along a path we have chosen without consulting him, we run the great risk of crash landing.  God has promised to lead us in the right paths and to be with us all along the way.  But we must listen to him and adjust our lives when a course correction is needed.  Are you following His flight plan or are you maneuvering by your own program today?