Ephesians Lesson 3/Day 3

Years ago, I packed up my car and my then 10-year-old son Jonathan, and we headed up to Central California to visit my mom and step-dad. What originally was a straight shot up the 99 freeway and west into the Sierra Nevada foothills to her small mountain community became a memorable “over the river and through the woods” experience. For reasons I still could not tell you, Google maps directed us the backway to her new home. I hadn’t been there yet, so I had just plugged in her address and planned to follow the Google Lady’s voice. What I thought was going to be a long (6 hours) but fairly basic drive became a bit of an adventure. We meandered up the highway and I realized we were not on that simple route but a Google-generated detour. It seemed at first like a tedious, and even scary drive, but it actually turned out to be a breathtaking scenic trip - the roads wrapped around tight mountain bends with plunging valleys off to our right and the towering Sierra’s to our left. At one point in the drive it got so dark and abandoned looking that my son, trying to be brave, asked quietly from the backseat, “Are we lost?” I assured him we weren’t and that we’d see lights of homes soon...and thank God we did! Paul has taken us on a bit of a detour on his way from “for this reason” to “I ask you not to lose heart” in the opening of this chapter. We’ll dig in to the significance of that detour in tomorrow’s lesson, but today, let’s pause and thank God for the details we get when we take the time to read and appreciate God’s heart toward us in His Word.