“Turn left by the house at the top of the hill,” I tell my friends…

“Follow the road for about a mile and you’ll be in our neighborhood…

“See you in five minutes!”

Time passes.

Fifteen minutes…

Twenty minutes…

Thirty minutes…

I call them.

“What house at the top of the hill?” they ask.

“We’re still looking for it…”

“We crossed the river about two miles ago.”

Crossed the river?

The river is several miles past our house.

“Turn around,” I say…

“Here’s the name of the road where you should turn…”

I wondered…

How could they have possibly missed the house at the corner?

It’s the only house sitting on the edge of a forest preserve.

Easy to see…

Hard to miss.

Finally, our friends ring the doorbell.

“We found the road,” they say.

“But there’s no house on the corner.”

They are wrong, of course.

The house has been there for decades.

When the forest preserve was still a farm…

It was a farmer’s house.

Later a non-farming tenant moved in…

Now, the house sits empty…

Police swat teams use it for practice.

Windows and doors are boarded up.

But still, it is a solid brick house.

A reliable landmark…

 I know … because I passed the house just a couple of days ago.

Magnanimously, I choose to ignore my friends’ foolishness.

The next day as I drive home…

I feel smug…

Superior…

Knowing I will see the house when I come to the corner …

But…

As I approach the corner…

The house is gone…

Bulldozed…

The rubble hauled away…

The ground contoured and waiting for prairie grasses to reclaim it.

I had put my faith in something unreliable…

Failed to distinguish between the permanent and the temporary.

How easy it is to make the same mistake when finding Gods guidance for my life …

How easy to follow the temporary wisdom of this world…

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.  Colossians 2:8

When the wisdom of God is available to all…

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.  James 1:5-6

 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.  Matthew 7:7-8