CROSSING THE CAHABA

By Shirley Wiggins

Have you ever gotten off on the wrong road as you traveled toward a destination?

I remember crossing the Cahaba River in one day four times from all four directions:  North, South, East and West!

This wasn’t a joy ride.   I was actually traveling to a specific place – a destination I had driven to numerous times before.

I was going back home in a sense, headed for the small town where I grew up.   I had made this trip at least a hundred times before following a slightly different route.    As I drove farther from the familiar places, I grew a little anxious about whether or not I would recognize my exit in time to navigate the traffic and be in the correct lane for making my turn.

I guess I was so busy worrying that I subconsciously fell in behind a huge semi-truck pulling a tall trailer.  Maybe I just assumed he was looking for the same exit as me.   Turns out, he wasn’t; but when he exited the interstate highway,  I turned  behind him only to discover as I drove under the green exit sign that I was on the wrong highway headed in the wrong direction!

There I was in the middle of what seemed like a hundred cars and trucks whizzing by me on both sides of a three-lane highway.  There were no exits in sight and no place to turn around!  I grew seriously alarmed, and tried for the third time to get my husband on the phone so he could help me figure out how to get back to the right road.

Unfortunately he was in a meeting, and wasn’t answering his phone.  So, at the first possible exit, thinking I could find my way back from there, I exited the interstate only to find out there was no possible route there to take me where I needed to be.

 Apparently there really are places where you cannot get there (where you want to go) from here (where you currently are), and I seemed to be in one of those places!

 With no other obvious options, I got back on the road I had just exited from  (which was still the wrong road) and I kept driving in the wrong direction.

I can’t remember how long I drove, how many miles I covered, or how many turns I had to take to finally be headed back in the right direction (south).  However,  to this day I remember how upset I was to know the road I was driving on wasn’t going to take me to my preplanned destination.

When my husband was finally able to call me back and I told him what had happened, he asked, “Where are you?”   I could only say truthfully, “I have no idea, but I have crossed the Cahaba River four times!”

He was able to direct me to the nearest connection that would  get me back on the highway that would take me where I had intended to go when I got in the car early that morning!

Have you ever taken a wrong turn in life and found yourself living a life that was taking you farther and farther away from where you wanted to be? 

I have done that, too.   I wasted so many hours that day crossing the same River four times, resulting in the arrival at my destination well after dark that day.

The good news is I did eventually get there and I learned a very important lesson about travelling:  If you want to reach your destination, pay attention to the road signs along the route!

My Cahaba ‘crossings’ that day remind me of how carelessly I can let days and months and years slip by while not paying attention to the passing of time – precious time.   Having celebrated a good number of birthdays reminds me that I have used up more of my allotted days than I probably have left to enjoy life on this earth.

More important than whether or not I enjoy my life on this earth is the solemn reminder that just as life has a beginning, it also has an end date.  What happens then?  It becomes vitally important to me to know that when life on this earth ends, I will spend eternity in heaven with the God who gave me this life.

I believe in that certainty as my destination because I believe in the God of the Bible.  I believe the Holy Bible is the inspired Word of God and every word is true.

Do you believe in God?  Every day that we live brings us closer to our ultimate destination – the place where we will spend eternity.  Where that will be depends on the choices we are making now.

If we live our lives focused only on enjoying each day as it comes to the exclusion of considering what happens at the end of physical life, we can find ourselves in a place we never intended to be.  What do we really believe about life? 

There are many  serious life questions that should not be ignored.  Questions like:   do I really believe that life has purpose and meaning;  do I believe  life comes from a Creator – the God who gives life?  Does God really create each person with a specific plan for his or her life even though He has created and gifted millions and millions of lives with such great potentialities? 

 I do firmly and sincerely believe those specific things about life and about the  God of the Bible.  I believe the Holy Bible is the inspired Word of God, the Creator of life, my life and the world and everything and everyone in it.  I believe that with life comes responsibility, with responsibility comes accountability.

I use the term “my” life lightly because I have made an exchange with the God who gave me this life.   I have traded my sin-filled life for the transformed life of righteousness He offers by and through the death of Jesus Christ, His Son Who died on the cross taking the sin of the world on Himself.  See Colossians 2.

Why would God be in the business of making such a deal (covenant) with sinful people?!  The Bible gives a very detailed explanation for that life-changing, all-important transaction.  It is vitally important because sin invaded what God intended to be a perfect world.

People who have been given the gift of life have all (corporately and individually) taken a wrong road in life due to the infiltration of sin that came into the world in the Garden of Eden, the place God prepared for the first two humans He created.

Sin came in by a corrupt, deceiving creature who posed a question to the first woman, engaging her in a conversation designed to vilify God Himself:  charging God with lying and deceiving humans.  That blatant, blasphemous creature identified throughout the Bible as Satan,  laid the groundwork for the ongoing malicious vilifying of God that is still taking place today all over the world.

It is ironic, is it not,  that the devil who deceived and continues to deceive human beings actually accused God of being deceptive and a liar?

Inconceivable that a Liar lied and was “believed,” but Holy, Sacred, Sacrosanct God, who cannot lie, was disbelieved!

Because of the original sin of disobedience based in deception, Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, came to earth in the fullness of time to bring truth to a deceived humanity:  to set the record straight about the God who created the world and the people and everything in it.

Jesus Christ came to die – the sinless for the sinful - in order that people who choose to do so may turn around from the road to death and take the road which leads to life by the transaction provided by Christ Himself on the Cross at Calvary.

Sin takes people down a destructive and deadly road.  Sin leaves no one untouched, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.  See Romans 3:23 and 6:23.   But, our gracious and merciful God provided a turn-around, an exit ramp, which leads to fullness of joy in Him while on this earth and an eternity of life with Him in His forever kingdom.

Truth is very important to God who has seen that His written record of truth has been preserved for our knowledge and understanding in the Holy Bible.  Please see John 16:12-15,  and read it in the Amplified Bible translation, too,  if you can.

“The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all of the words of this law.”  Deuteronomy 29:29.

Do you, and your children, know the way that leads to God, the Giver of Life? 

“Jesus said…, ‘I am the Way and the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except by (through) Me.’” – John 14:6 Amplified Bible.

“He personally bore our sins in His [own] body on the tree [as on an altar and offered Himself on it], that we might die (cease to exist) to sin and live to righteousness.  By His wounds you have been healed.”   1 Peter 2:24  Amplified Bible.