I’ve been on vacation on Cape Cod for the last few days. My son and I are sharing a house with my family, 1500 miles from home, which gives me plenty of opportunity to think about getting oriented. New house, new places to visit each day, all with people who’ve annoyed, corrected, and loved me since childhood…I am completely unmoored from my usual routines and activities. In a manner of speaking, we’re constantly lost. But we’re techy-geeks and proud of it, so on any particular excursion we’ve usually got a GPS in the car, plus two or three GPS-enabled smart phones. We rarely get lost, and if we do, someone’s always ready to guide us back to our route.

The longer I walk The Way the more the psalms become like Google Maps on my smart phone…my way of getting oriented in God. When something as simple as pouring milk on my son’s breakfast cereal becomes difficult because the fridge doors mysteriously swing open during the night, warming the milk to questionable temperatures and sparking an internal debate about whether to use the milk or not (all this before I’ve had any caffeine), I need something to orient me. A quick dip into the psalms helps, like finding the blinking blue arrow on Google Maps, pointing in my direction of movement. Here you are, the psalms say. Here you are. God is all around you. You travel in God’s glory and beauty. No matter which way you go, no matter how long the journey takes, the psalms will guide you on The Way.