Faith like Frogger…

Remember the vintage video game Frogger?  I don’t know how many quarters and hours I wasted as a teenager trying to get my electronic frog safely across the road and river.  It seems simple.  Jump as fast as you can across the obstacles.  Dodge the vehicles.  Look out for alligators. It sounds simple and logical to move forward as fast as you can ,but  unless you learn the art of waiting, you can wind up with a lot of dead frogs and not much success. 

The key to frogger is knowing when to sit still:  Sitting still on the banks until a the right log comes by.  Sitting still even in the path of an oncoming semi-truck until the right space opens up in the next lane.  Sitting still even as your floating log hurtles toward the edge of the screen and certain froggy death.  Successfully crossing to the other side in Frogger demands that you resist the urge to jump until the RIGHT spot…the spot created by the game designer…opens up.  (And when that spot opens up you better move fast…because if you don’t you’ll wind up kicking the machine and reaching for another quarter!)

Life feels a lot like frogger sometimes doesn’t it?    It’s hard to know when to “jump” and when to “wait”.   At times it feels like the “right” spot is never going to open up and allow you to move forward.   At times it feels like you are stranded in the middle of the road with no way to move forward or backwards…and a semi-truck hurtling toward your at full speed!

I read something in the first chapter of Joshua that reminded me of life…and Frogger…this week.  After FORTY YEARS of wandering and waiting,of “hopping” and stopping and starting again,  God told Joshua that they were going to enter their “promised land” in three short days.  He told them they would finally reach the other side of the Jordan River with these words:

7 “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.   Joshua 1:7  

God wants us to trust him.  To allow him to guide us into the “right spot” at the right time.  Just like Joshua, the only way we are going to successfully reach the other side is to trust God’s direction…to “hop” when he says hop….to wait when he said wait.  Our success in depends not only on being strong and courageous, but in “not turning either right or left” without Gods direction!

That’s the kind of Faith I want to develop…it’s what I am learning from our whole relocation process as a church.  I hope you’ll pray with me.  Pray for our great crew.  Pray for me.   Wait with us.  And most of all, be ready to JUMP…because I know that God has a “right spot at the right time”  for us all to get to the “other side”…

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