The humility of Satnav

Reading Nick's recent post on getting out of depth with God prompted me to remember something that happened when I visited Bristol for the first time.

It was the summer of 2002, and I'd been accepted on a course that started in October. I'd made some enquiries and provisionally found a room in a house tucked away in the middle of a small street called Manor Park, somewhere in a place called 'Redland', in the north of the city. I just needed to visit and check that it was OK.

I lived in Derbyshire at the time, so getting to Bristol was a simple matter of motorways... but, rather than drive straight in  - I'd decided to get a bit of a feel for the city on the way by going down the Portway, under Brunel's bridge, and then back up to the house through town... it was a bit of a round route... but I'd bought a map and I wasn't in any hurry.

Now I like maps (actually, I love maps)... and I don't like satnavs... and I'm not sure why, because really, surely, in terms of getting to a place, they're the same thing. Perhaps the difference is just one of mentality. I'm one of those people who likes the big picture... and I struggle to engage with things if I only see a small part. With a map, you can trace out where you're going right from the start (and adjust if you get stuck... or, if you're The Wife, find at least one road every journey that has grass down the middle). A satnav, on the other hand, assumes that you only want to go where you're going and you don't want to go anywhere else... or know anything else about where you are... and that you'll only want to know where to go at the last minute. For me, that's like tunnel vision... In academic terms a Satnav would be a crammer who learns formulae by heart... I need to build understanding from first-principles. Or in manufacturing terms, a Satnav would be a just-in-time supplier, and I'm more of a stockpiler... I like to pace myself and know what I'm doing beforehand and why, and I like time to decide whether I might want to do something completely different instead.

Anyway... back to the story...

As it happens, being June, it was absolutely freezing and, as I drove down the Portway, it started chucking it down. By the time I got to the bridge, the rain was so heavy that my windscreen had started to mist up and all I saw of it was a ghostly line against the sky... The next thing I knew, I was past it and swinging left in a sea of mist and fast-moving brake lights, the wipers whipping from side to side... the rain hammering on the roof, unable to look away from the road to the A to Z in my lap, and failing miserably to pick out anything remotely resembling a road name...

Flash... pub... flash... garage... flash... boats... flash... roundabout... green light... hesitate... beeeeep... have to go... which way? Left... panic... up a hill... junction... panic... which way... left... no right... have to go right... can't go right... angry now... can't stop... two lanes... drive faster... (why do we do that? Fight or flight?) ... sucked round to the right by a bus on the left... got to pull off... turn left... green lights all the way (typical)... still can't stop... pound steering wheel in frustration... grind teeth... map slips through knees to the foor... turn off the music (can't listen and drive under pressure at the same time)... Finally a red light - still no street names - stop, reach for map - green... damn... map now under the pedals... foggy windows... shops... uphill again... more uphill... steeeeep uphill... T-junction... panic... right... roundabout...

... Seething with frustration I thought "I'm going to have to stop and find out where I am"...

I threw the car down a short hill... round another roundabout... and left into a small street where I stopped as soon as I could and slumped back in the seat, sweating...

I fumbled under my feet for the map and pulled it out and flipped through to the index at the back.The sheet on which I'd written the address I was looking for had fallen out and had a creased bootprint across it. 

"Manor Park, Manor Park... where's that... page... OK... there it is (on the join, as always)... Now, what the hell street am I in?"

... and I looked out the window, where - through the fog, and sitting no more than four feet from my face -  was a slighty battered, black and white, steel street sign... which read... Manor Park.

Coincidence? Maybe... Utterly humbling... certainly.

Thinking back to Nick's post, I've been in situations with God that feel a bit like this, particularly in missions. In them, God is utterly reliable - and strangely quiet... and it's completely humbling: It's like having a Satnav. And although I've learned to recognise when it's happening and trust that the outcome is going to be reliably good, I've never quite got over the half-way feeling of being completely out of control and hung out to dry...

But perhaps that's that point... if I were given control over where to go... I'd never get anywhere... one moment I'd be progressing nicely, the next I'd be sitting in a café sipping a glass of wine, or browsing the shelves of a secondhand bookshop in a town I never knew existed.

... and I'd miss out on being completely amazed by the apparent coincidences that curiously seem to pepper life when you let God take the wheel.