Straight Ahead

Admittedly, I was such an Amy Grant fan back in the day. (still am, actually) Yes, I saw her in concert about seven times when I was a teen.  In 1984 she released an album called, “Straight Ahead”. That thing played on my record player and my cassette player, (That’s right boys and girls. I said cassette player), over and over and over again.  That whole album reached me deeply, but all the more so the title song.  Every time I heard it I committed my path to the Lord, again and again. “Straight ahead, I can see Your light. Straight ahead, through the dark. Straight ahead, there’s no left or right. Straight ahead to Your heart.” I just knew that nothing would ever make me look to the left or right…… ….But life has countless things to look at on the left and on the right.  In fact, there are voices on both sides, and behind, calling us over.  I’m convinced, now, that there are millions of distractions in this life, trying to steal away our time the the One Who Is, the One with all the right answers, the One Who loves us more than we love us. Social media has got us looking everywhere but up much of the time.  For me, it’s very disheartening to see Jesus followers bickering back and forth, looking over to the left to see what this one’s saying, looking over to the right to find more fault in what that one’s doing.  We’re looking toward media and what they are bringing us. We’re numbing out in various ways because all of this is so overwhelming. Yet, the Maker of the Universe is still ahead of the path we said we were going to take in the first place.  He’s got a big bucket of peace to pour over us.  He’s got the know how to navigate through everything. What if we all stopped looking at each other and started looking only at Him?  He is looking at all of us with perfect love, so when we look at Him, we’ll start seeing what He’s seeing. Part of that would be seeing each other rightly.  Also, strife would disintegrate. This has been on my heart so much that I’ve been thinking of writing about this for all of you this week.  Interestingly enough, (and not a coincidence), a dear friend messaged my wife and me this morning and said this: “I dreamed that I was in the middle of a search on the internet.  I wanted to get back to the original screen, so I kept pressing the left arrow over and over but I couldn’t find the screen I wanted. Then I heard a voice say, ‘You can’t go backward.  GO FORWARD.’ I woke up, and as soon as I opened my eyes, two Scriptures came to me in a flash":

I would say that God is confirming my writing this email today.  I believe He wants us to recommit to looking straight ahead toward Him. He’s there with a constant invitation to “Come up here. Come up now.” no matter how many times we wander. Praise God for His desire to see us live a better life!                                                                                                         Love, Todd