In the spring of my first year of seminary, a missionary priest came to my home parish. He was then Director of the Quebec-Labrador Mission Foundation. I joined him in his work, that summer, serving as Lay Reader in charge of the church in a small English-speaking, fishing village just 50 miles south of Labrador. The priest’s name was Bob Bryant. During his own college years he and a friend made extra money selling recordings of funny stories about rural New Englanders, called Bert and I. One was the story of a Maine farmer plowing his field. When a fellow flew overhead in a hot air balloon, the balloonist called down to ask the farmer, “Where am I?” The farmer shouted back, “You’re in a balloon you dang fool!” In another story a farmer was sitting on his porch, when a couple of city folk drove up in their fancy car to ask directions on how to get to Bangor. The farmer proceeded to make several attempts to give them directions, ending each set of instructions with the words, “Nope that way won’t get ya’ there.” Then, the farmer finally scratched his head, saying, “Come to think of it ya’ just can’t get there from here.”

How many times in the course of our lives have we gotten lost along the way to our destinations? A trip can start well enough, with all the promise in the world, of getting to our destination in a timely fashion, only to take a wrong turn along the way, which takes us far off course. It can happen with road trips and it can happen with the journey of life as well.

A classic example of that was the journey the Hebrews – the one mentioned in our Old Testament reading for today. Their journey started promisingly enough. Through Moses God had told them that He’d lead them out of slavery in Egypt and on to a new homeland – the Promised Land. What could go wrong – with God leading them? He’d already liberated them from slavery. He’d already led them out of Egypt. He’d already provided them with guidance, food and water along the way. Then, in today’s reading from Exodus, the Hebrew people camped for the first time at the foot of Mt. Sinai. After meeting with God, Moses returned with extremely reassuring promises about their destination. He said, “You’ll be God’s treasured possession out of all the peoples.” He added, “Indeed, the whole earth is God’s, but you’ll be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” That was their destiny – the destination of their life journey. They wouldn’t merely wind up free and in a land of their own, they had a most significant purpose, as well – one that God had prepared for them to fulfill. What could go wrong? To get there all they had to do was follow God’s directions. That is, in the language of our passage, all they had to do was “obey God’s voice and keep God’s covenant with them.” That sounded reasonable enough, and so they all said, in one voice, “We’ll do everything that the Lord has spoken.” The route to their destination seemed clear and simple to follow. Alas, in a very short time they took a wrong turn and got very lost along the way. They did it without even moving from their campsite at Mt. Sinai.

I wonder if any of you’re like me. Sometimes I’ll do the unmanly thing of stopping to ask for directions and, while the person is explaining, I’ll phase out, and miss some key steps. Perhaps that’s what happened to the Hebrews. No sooner had they agreed to do everything the Lord had spoken than they didn’t follow through with it. As the story goes, Moses climbed up Mt. Sinai to receive further instructions from God. He took a lot longer than the people thought he should – 40 days in all! During that time, they wondered what had happened to Moses. Their wonderment turned into concern. Their concern turned into anxiety. Their anxiety turned into panic. And they became convinced that he must be dead and gone. That’s when they took their wrong turn. Panicked that Moses was gone and that God had left them high and dry in the wilderness all alone, they decided that they needed another god out there to take up their cause. They decided that if they built an idol they might just woo the patronage of some other super human force to help them out of their predicament. People can think and do the oddest things when they’re afraid and panicky. They can even abandon the very principles and values that make them unique. It happens in our time too.

So the Hebrews made a very wrong turn – one that took them far off course from being God’s cherished people -- from being a priestly kingdom for God. It looked for a while as if, to borrow words from that farmer, “they couldn’t get there from where they were.” But with God no journey is completely lost. God never leaves us stranded -- in a place from which we can’t get back to Him.

That’s not to say that wrong turns don’t have their consequences. They do. Once the Hebrew people took their wrong turn, they couldn’t just carry on uninterrupted in the direction originally laid out for them. They couldn’t just be the priestly kingdom of God and the holy nation that was their original destiny – simply by saying they would. But God did have an alternate route for them. God always has a “plan B.” In this case, if the Hebrew people couldn’t be God’s priestly people by agreeing to follow His directions and then doing it, God provided the alternate route of a 40-year detour. I guess God had it in mind that it would take them a good generation or two in the wilderness to be forged into His people – to learn to trust and obey Him so that they could take it with them into their new homeland. So they wandered from one barren place to another – having to rely upon God all the way.

That can be true for us as well. There are times in the journey of our lives when we encounter crossroads or forks in the road. When that happens it’s important for us to consult with God as earnestly as we can – to ask God which way to go -- by praying and referring to His guideposts in scripture and Christian tradition. Some-times, perhaps even most of the time, God’s reply is that it’s up to us. When that happens it’s best to use our God-given brains, our reason and intuitive feelings, our wisdom, common sense and good judgment to decide what course to follow – when it comes to what jobs we do, what friends we make, what place to live, what car to buy, and so forth. And then, in hindsight, if we feel that we might have done better, we can either emphasize the positive and move on, or we can make a change with the extra cost in time, effort or money that may be involved. When God does offer us direction – on what to do, what course to take, and how to treat others or conduct our selves along the way – well, then, it’s important to follow His instructions. If we’d prefer to do otherwise, like the Hebrew people, we may find our selves out of sync with God, off track, off course, even lost. There are blessings to be found in following God’s lead. When we do we, like them, too, can find that God makes us priests – intermediaries between God and other people. The Hebrew people, as far as I can tell, never did live up to that role, though. They kept making wrong turns, and we can too. When we do our cause is never lost, though. God never gives up on us, and never leaves us on our own. It may take a long time, hard work and much personal pain, but God offers us alternate routes back to His ways.

One of the reasons that I’m convinced God exists and that in Christ He can reach into our lives for good is because of a young man I’ve known for many years. When he was a teenager he was deeply depressed. His parents tried all sorts of ways to find help for him. Instead, he turned to street drugs, including heroine, to find escape. When he was arrested, his parents provided lawyers and got him off. When he was arrested again, though, they let him go to prison. It was only in the depth of that pain that he finally reached out to God for help in ways he hadn’t before. He suffered the consequences, of course, lost years of his life and endured the hardships of prison. But that’s where he found a new life in Christ. Now he’s a new person – drug free and no longer depressed. God uses him to help others when they get lost. It’s best to save our selves pain and receive God’s blessings by following God’s directions. But if we get lost – even very lost – God’s always there to provide an alternate route to be what He wants us to be, even if it’s the hard way.