Where Was Google Taking Us?
We were only two blocks away.
Saturday was Patty’s birthday.
No, you cannot ask which one.
But you may want to know how she feels about birthdays.
Everyone should get a day off from work for their birthday!
Yes. That is her opinion, and if she were making the rules for all of us, we would all enjoy our birthdays with a day off from work. It is good for her that her birthday fell on a Saturday, so there was no conflict to resolve between her maxim and reality.
I reserved an Airbnb for a couple of nights. We left early, and the agenda was, “Where do you want to go?” Patty was born in Lawton, Oklahoma. We did not drive to Lawton for nostalgic reasons. I am not sure her family lived there any length of time after she was born, but she and a friend had discovered Lil’ Mikes Thrift Village there.
Patty put Lil’ Mikes in her Google Maps on her iPhone. Once we arrived in Lawton, we followed the directions. No problem. We perused the thousands of square feet of items and found a few we thought were worth buying. She bought a quilt and eight white plates. Me? I found an out-of-print book by William Manchester that covered the days after President Kennedy’s assassination.
We found a place to freshen up and get something to drink before the next stop, which was wherever she wanted to go.
Patty found an antique shop. She pulled up the map, and we set out for our next stop.
This time, it was not so easy.
We followed the directions from Google Maps and drove farther away from Lawton. Maybe the shop was in a small town near Lawton. Wrong. We ended up south and east of Lawton, and once we hit the X marks the spot, we were at the intersection of nothing and nothing.
We wondered where Google was taking us.
Once we found a place to pull over, we looked up the shop again. We entered the information as before. And we headed in that direction. Back to civilization. And to our surprise, only two blocks from where we had stopped for a refreshment. Two blocks.
We laughed.
What else are you to do? Ruin a birthday weekend? Nope. We pulled up to the shop, met the lovely manager, enjoyed the walk-through, and walked out with what we came with, nothing.
Both times, we entered the same address. One response led us on an excursion away from where we intended to go. The second time, we drove right up to the parking lot.
You may be glad to know that when it came time to leave Lawton for the Airbnb, we already knew where we were going—there were no detours.
Often, we know where we want to go. We rely on others or an app to get us there. Occasionally, we end up where we least expected. Rather than give up after the first failed attempt, we try again.
Life is arbitrary, and so is Google Maps. In both cases, how we respond to the distances traveled when we only need to go a few blocks matters for our formation and shapes the kind of people we become.
We begin the Season After Epiphany today. Reading the Gospels, we discover what kind of person Jesus is, whether he travels down the street to heal Peter’s mother-in-law or outside of familiar territory to Phonecia, where he healed a woman’s daughter. What gets revealed is that no matter where Jesus is, we discover what God is like.