God’s Go Slow
- AfraOpoku
- June 8, 2025
- Uncategorized
- 0 Comments
…and God took them the longer route1
After the day I’ve had. I’m very much in ‘Jesus take the wheel’ mode.
After work, I ran an errand in a part of town I rarely ever go to.
Getting there was relatively easy but the traffic in the opposite direction was nothing to be excited about.
Anticipating a long drive home, I turned to google maps for the shortest route which would bypass the obvious traffic I would have to deal with if I were to return on the usual route. Google informed me of an alternative route which would shave 30minuites off my journey. It wasn’t a route I knew but in search of a shortcut, instinct prevailed and I made one of my worst decisions all year.
Picture driving through a new years parade in times square, then add in dozens of tricycles with unlicensed operators who have zero regard for traffic etiquette.
Multiply that by at least five and you may be able to picture the mess google put me in. With people, cars and motor cycles inching into every available space, I discovered what the word gridlock meant in real time.
On this route, cars had very little rights and I knew of stories of drivers being lynched after hitting careless pedestrians in this particular community.
Caught between moving a few inches every 10 minuities and the fear of death, you guessed it; I resigned myself to tortoise pace.
After sitting in traffic for what was two hours longer than I would have, had I used the conventional route, my top concern remained getting out alive without any damage to my car.
Four hours later when I got home, I spent the evening questioning my decision-making paradigm (and swearing off google).
Isreal had the opposite experience.
They weren’t given a choice when they got out of Egypt.
They got routed to the path that was the slower way to get to the promised land.
This didn’t just happen because there was no access to google.
God deliberately took them on that route because the faster road meant encountering elements that could have prevented them from getting into the promised land.
Good story; except God still uses that plan quite a bit for more than a few people.
If you’ve seen a few contemporaries or even your juniors go before you in one area of life or another, there is a good chance you’re on that list
Our heavenly Father -who has a far better eyeview than google- will often take his kids on the slower road just so we end up arriving.
Before this disastrous gridlock encounter, I was the one to complain whenever I encountered uncomfortable delays. After this experience I’m sticking firmly to the devil route I know.
Wisdom has taught me getting there in one piece if far better than not getting there at all.
We don’t know what the so-called fast road holds. We do know that God uses the red light far more than the green.
Like us, Israel complained of the seemingly slow progress, not knowing the reason God chose a marathon for them. If they had done the sprint and been attacked on that road, there is a good chance they would have returned to Egypt.2
Ultimately, a lack of faith meant only two of the adults who left Egypt actually ended up in Canaan.
A bad attitude when we’re hit by delay can be devastating, but the Lord who starts every journey has a destination in mind -even when we can’t see it.
Bottom line: God has our best interests at heart.
He who defines time, knows when it’s right for every single one of us.
God can be trusted not to waste our time regardless of what we feel.
He can also redeem time we seem to have lost as he did when Caleb was way past retirement but still conquering cities.3
When we trust him, He’ll put us on the right road.
The right road isn’t always the fastest.
It’s the one that gets us home.
1 Exodus 13v 17
2 Numbers 14 v 2
- Joshua 14 v 12-15