Is God the GPS or the Friend Who Gets Lost with You?

I am at Luther Springs for a women's retreat.  This month is a feast, if one believes in the feast or famine kind of dichotomy, a feast of retreats.  In terms of programming, we're using some pre-prepared curriculum, but I can't tell you which one because I left my booklet on the table in the group meeting area in the chapel.  It's the kind of curriculum that leaves me a bit tired, but not because it's intellectually demanding.

In past years, I might have decided to skip the group work, but this year I'll stick with it, at least for a bit.  After all, I'm training to be a pastor, so it's good to see this side of church life.  And I do understand why people use this kind of curriculum.  It's similar to those VBS-in-a-box kind of deals, and for those of us who don't have time to create VBS or retreats from scratch, I get it.

For those of you wondering why I'm being circumspectly negative, I'll offer this example.  We had a story last night to go with the "Return to the Lord your God" passage of Joel (Joel 2:  13).  It was a story about people in a car, getting lost, ignoring what the GPS says, the road going from paved to cobblestones and finally almost into the Mississippi River.  If only they had listened to the calls of the GPS that told them turn around!

In our small group, we talked about the language of repenting and returning.  We talked about God as the perfect parent--I added "Or partner."  One of the group leaders joined our small group and talked about how God has the one right way, and when she can align herself to it, things always go better.  We talked more about the ways we fall away from all the ways we should be living, all the actions we should be doing--in other words, all the reasons why we should repent.

I became more and more uneasy with this idea that there's one right way, and it's so hard for us to follow it.  But I wanted to respond pastorally, not combatively.  I thought back to the story.  I asked, "But what if God isn't the GPS system?  What if God is the friend in the car, going with us to the unexpected places, saying 'OK, if you want to head to the Mississippi River, we'll go there together.  Let's explore what that would look like.'"

My small group liked that idea.  The group leader said, "You know, I once went to a spiritual director.  When I asked what God wanted me to do, he said, 'What do you want to do?  I think God would want to know what your heart's desire is."  We talked a bit about that idea, that there are many ways to find God, not just the one path that proves so difficult for so many of us.

I'll be interested to take Church History classes in seminary next year.  So many of us have so many strange ideas about God, and I'd like to know how these ideas evolved.  I know it solved someone's purpose to focus on texts that tell us that humans are sinful creatures with much work to do before we can be pleasing to God.

And I know that most believers are not going to let go of those ideas easily.  We like the idea of a God who tells us that we're going the wrong way.  We like our GPS God.  A God who gets lost with us--that's a tougher sale, and I get that.

But to me, it's a much more compelling metaphor.