Musings at Altitude

On any given day, we are inundated with signs.  Those signs may tell us to stop, or to slow down, or to be careful, or to turn right, or even to evacuate.  Those signs take many forms, the most noticeable being the ones that line every single path we may be traveling on:

But others signs exist too.  Like the gnawing at your gut when you’re making a business decision and something tells you the path you are leaning towards (or going down) is wrong.  Or that slimy feeling you get when you shake someone’s hand and listen for a few minutes and know that something is wrong with that particular individual or that particular relationship.  Or that tingling you get when you sense something bad is fixing to happen and sure enough it does.

During my almost 50 years on this earth, I’ve had my share of signs.  And I certainly have had all of those that I mentioned above.  But I’ve also had clear signs that weren’t man made, and those signs are the ones that give me pause.  For example, I’ve had interviews with business leaders from very small towns (3500 miles from where I lived) that I had never heard of before; and then, 4 days after that interview, I run into another individual from that same small town that knew the very people that were interviewing me for a particular job.  And as another example, I once traveled 2500 miles for an introductory discussion with an individual that I would be working for just a few weeks later and something seemed terribly wrong.  As I was flying back, I got a gut wrenching pain in the stomach that had me nearly bent over, which caused me to request a release from that assignment.  Three months later, that individual I had met with ended up being arrested and convicted of fraud and spent several years in a US penitentiary.  And then there was the time I was driving down the road going 70 mph in a sullen gray drizzle, and for no reason that I could ever understand, I slammed on the brakes on a rain slicked road, and slid sideways down the road without spinning till I came to a stop only 15 or 20 feet from a jack-knifed tractor trailer.

Each one of these was a sign.  One was an obvious green light, showing me that I was taking the right road.  The other was a clear stop sign, telling me to go no further.  And the third was a brilliantly clear indicator that whatever purpose I had in this life was not yet accomplished.

Over the years, I’ve become much more aware of those not so subtle signs.  And even though I now clearly understand who provided those signs, I still resist the directions that are given.  When the green light is bright and the path clear, I want to stop.  When the stop sign is given and there is traffic all around, I want to keep going.  And when I’m given a second and probably undeserved chance, I want to waste it by questioning and doubting those very clear signs that are given.

It’s time for me to pay attention to those signs and be obedient to the authority from which they came.  It’s also time for me to quit questioning and resisting and to start believing and following.

For those of you that know me, yielding to authority is not what I do best, and it’s a great challenge for me to ultimately submit to any higher authority.  But when those signs are so clear and the consequences of disobedience are so great, it absolutely staggers me to think that I would resist and rebel.

And yet I do.  I am indeed a work in progress, and I do indeed need to follow the signs.  As Michael W. Smith says:

Follow the signs

Open your eyes

Look at the signs

Open your mind

Follow the signs.

Very good advice!