2024/35 MY OWN PERSONAL GPS

Remember when GPS was not a thing? 

I still have a file on my computer with written directions to our house from various starting points. We used to have to send it to people all the time.

Remember when the jockey box in the car was full of maps?

Remember when we used the back of an envelope to write directions to a friend’s house?

We kept our brains well-oiled by reviewing directions then following them bit by bit, as much as we could remember, then pulling over to read another section about where to turn and when.

Then, lo and behold, they came out with those expensive Garmin positioning systems you could put in your car? 

Now we have GPS in our pockets. Our phones speak to us. Groovy cars that have less miles on them than mine have little steely tongued women telling us not only where to turn, but how many lights we will go through before we turn left. “Your destination is in 300 yards on your right.”

I get in my car and all I have to do is say,

“Hey Siri, take me to See’s Candies in Salt Lake City.” 

She not only responds promptly to confirm that I am going to Sees she passes no judgement on me for going there.

We are spoiled by GPS. We count on it to get us where we are going to the degree we get in our cars and head the general direction and casually ask our devices to take us somewhere, trusting without question that it will do what we have commanded it to do. It will even take us on the back roads if it sees traffic is bad. I venture to guess the average person under the age of 30 does not even know how to read a map and would feel bothered by someone giving detailed directions for how to get somewhere. We are so easily bothered by details, to the degree we won’t even pick up the phone to talk because we don’t allow the emotional space for small talk. I see this in myself, and I’m tiptoeing swiftly into old age already.

Apparently there are all sorts of positioning systems, using different types of communication. Sound waves, light waves, time…these are all factors. In the traditional Global Positioning System we all use (GPS) we depend on satellites beyond our sight and sound to decipher where we are in relation to where we want to go. We trust that where it tells us to go is where we want to go. Hooray for trustworthy GPS.

Then again, sci-fi horror tales are made of things like this gone awry.

I think my own personal GPS is probably my most cherished gift of all time.

You might have your own personal GPS, too, like mine. But the G doesn’t stand for Global.

It stands for God.

God’s Positioning System, aka the Holy Ghost, alias the Holy Spirit.

The longer I live, and the more I learn and experience, the more I realize I need this personal positioning system more than I need discipline or knowledge or luck. It’s God’s positioning system that tucks little love notes in my heart, and wordless whisperings of wisdom and direction to my brain. The other day it led my car straight to my daughter’s house because I felt she needed my touch. Just a hug. Yesterday it told me to soak pinto beans overnight because I’m leaving town and Ariel might need them while I’m gone. My GPS told me today to sit down and listen when a friend called and needed to talk. My GPS can give me hints on Sunday mornings, when I sit in church and my teeth crush the sacramental token, about where I stand with my God and myself. It reminds me that I need to drink more water and less Coke. Its on all the time! I just don’t notice it sometimes. Then I need it to get me out of trouble and give me directions to get back home. Siri is not going to assume to know where I want to go, and neither does my GPS. I have to pause and think about it and invite it to direct me. 

The Holy Ghost is part of that power trio, companions in every aspect of existence with God the Father and God the Son whom we call Christ.  I mean no sacrilege by talking about the Holy Ghost. I don’t know if it’s a he or she or them. I only know that he/she/they were willing to go without a body so they could do things bodies can’t do, like get into the crevices of my heart. 

There’s a little joke I know that goes like this:

A mother took her little son to the doctor. The doctor takes a tongue depressor and looks in the child’s mouth.

“I wonder if I’ll find Cookie Monster in here?” says the doctor.

She then taps the child’s knee to check reflexes.

“I wonder if Spiderman is hiding in your knee?”

Then the doctor puts her stethoscope to the boy’s heart and says, “I wonder if I can hear Mickey Mouse in there?”

The boy finally speaks up:

“No Silly, Jesus is in my heart! Mickey’s on my underpants.”

 

I’m thinking how it might be for me if I didn’t have Jesus in my heart. What if all I knew of Jesus is his history and his commandments? What if I never felt that zingy feeling I sometimes get when I hear something divine? What if I never understood why I get goosebumps when someone tells me a story that carries spiritual truth? How would I know? 

My own personal GPS has learned how I think, how I work, how I mourn and how I rejoice. It understands me, probably better than I logically understand myself. Its power source is divine. It kicks in sometimes when I am totally spent and have no energy to spare. Good thing I don’t power it myself!

Thank you, Lord, for giving directions on how to get home, the kind we used to find in maps, the kind that are printed on rice paper thin books of scripture. Thanks for that.

But my deepest thanks, God, goes to you for the power that was laid on my newly baptized head through authorized hands. You blessed me with an organic device that can read where I am in relation to where I want to go. It knows how fast I move and with how much fuel I have left, and is willing to guide but not force me to take one of the paths that will lead me Home.