Which voice will you listen to….the machines or humans? Sometimes I love the GPS but other times I could smash it. The woman’s voice can get annoying when she doesn’t know what she is talking about. Doesn’t she realize we know the way home!
It all started when we decided to stop at our famous Tim Horton’s for breakfast. We just had a wonderful night at our niece’s home just across the border in Michigan. Although it was too early in the morning for my liking, my husband insisted that we leave early at 7 a.m.
It’s been over a decade since we crossed the border at Sault Ste Marie, but it should have been easy. But not this time! We stopped to get gas on the US side since it is at least 30% cheaper. Never miss an opportunity for lower prices when you have the chance. We even found a decent hotel for $50 in Michigan on the way to SW Ontario. I don’t think I would find that on the Canadian side.
Getting back to the annoyance of the GPS….just for fun I punched in our home address in Thunder Bay, 700 kilometres away. We were still at the gas station in Michigan close to the Canadian border. Crossing the border was a breeze so early in the morning, but we needed coffee from Tim’s. Probably an addiction….we had only been away from the last Tim’s about 24 hours.
So we stopped at the first Tim Horton’s we saw in downtown Sault Ste. Marie. As early as it was, I had breakfast just in case we couldn’t find any restaurants along Hwy 17.
The cashier was busy, but we asked for directions to get to Hwy 17. She had to ask someone else, but came back quickly. She pointed to a direction and assured us that the highway is just up the hill. It sounded easy enough.
Trust is something I struggle with so I wanted to follow the GPS also. Just to make sure!
We tried to follow the lady’s instructions, but could not find the highway going west. By the way, the reason we missed the turn at the border was because the sign was incomplete? I remember looking at the sign and it pointed to the east and the airport. (We have no idea which direction the airport is.)
Now we were trying to follow two sets of directions….the lady at Tim Horton’s and the lady on the GPS. Which one is right? Sounds crazy, I know.
In spite of all these directions we still missed the turn to Hwy 17 West. Unbelievable! Simply put…the lady was wrong. No, she was not, but we were wrong when we did not see it. But what confused us along the way was the GPS blaring the annoying woman’s voice.
Do you know what she was saying? “Recalculating….make a U-turn if possible.” I heard that a dozen times, since we now had found Hwy 17 and kept on driving. Actually I wanted to test the accuracy of the GPS. Why on earth did it keep telling us to turn back at every road that crosses the highway?
The mystery of the GPS kept us questioning the technology. There have been instances where people have missed and driven to some remote locations and got stuck and totally lost, even died in extreme circumstances. Why? Because people blindly trust the GPS and have no sense of the big picture. Often I carry a paper map as backup.
The confusing voices kept us guessing. Are we going in the right direction? Since we’ve driven that highway hundreds of times in the past, what were we thinking? Memory lapse?
If we question God long enough about the direction He is taking us, we can get confused, even though we know His purpose for us. Listening to two voices at the same time also makes us doubt ourselves. Not a good thing!
“…..a man of two minds (hesitating, dubious, irresolute), (he is) unstable and unreliable and uncertain about everything (he thinks, feels, and decides).” James 1:8 AMP
There are many voices you listen to, but which one will you act upon? Doubt or faith? We had to trust that we were on the right road. So which voice do we think on the most? The one we feed the most will be the one we act on.
The mystery of the GPS.
It finally dawned on us that the reason the GPS was directing us to make a U-turn was that it was programmed in the US side so it wanted us to drive through the States to get home. The distance was longer according to the GPS.
A lesson learned. What about you? How has your life changed as a result of embracing the technology age? Or have you? What voices are you listening to?