Any Road Will Take You There

I spent a good part of my career as a strategy consultant, and a favorite quote I liked to use was, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” That stopped most executives dead in their tracks, with their heads bobbing in worried agreement. Seriously, how can you expect to make progress and grow your company if you don’t have an intentional, well-defined plan that tells exactly how you will get from A to B? Come on people, bring out the flip charts and let's define B. This advice was fine to administer while I was in the consulting business, but now that I work in a real company, I have a new favorite quote: “Plans are useless, but planning is priceless.” It’s not that we don’t plan, we do. But we also acknowledge that things happen beyond our control - markets change, new competitors emerge, breakthrough technologies take hold, the economy goes down the toilet. Things happen. And your roadmap gets tossed right out the bathroom window. We recognize that it is equally important to be good at sensing and responding to the changes happening around us. This real-time mode of living is shrouded with mystery and unpredictability. Heck, sometimes we can’t even precisely define B. It's all blurs and hunches and shadowy outlines, and maybe it feels more like we are being taken somewhere, rather than having it all mapped out. It's like a bigger purpose is moving in our lives, and we are riding the invisible momentum of a wave propelling us to some future destiny. We are sensing. Watching. Responding. Some call this intuition; others, the Spirit's leading. High Calling blogger Cheryl Smith at Culture Smith Consulting calls this vague sense of future calling an undercurrent. She wonderfully describes this exciting form of not-planning as a legitimate path of faith - one step at a time.

The other day I had lunch with a friend who shared that she is being drawn to something different. The next thing. She has an idea of what that thing might look like, but can’t be completely sure because many of the pieces are in other people’s hands. I said to her something like,

“God is moving you from A to B. You just don’t know where B is. There is an undercurrent of movement.”

Even as I said those words to her, they penetrated my heart. I’ve been feeling my own undercurrent of movement in recent weeks.

Cheryl goes on to talk about Abram, in Genesis, how he just packed up and left when God called him. He had no idea where he was going to end up. “I’m listening to God for the next step.” Cheryl says. “From A to an unknown B. An undercurrent of movement.” Maybe you have an idea, or an inkling, like your soul is receiving some celestial signal. There is some deep conviction bubbling up in your gut, trying to push its way out. And all you know is that change is coming, and you need to be part of it, and it’s as real and hard as the chair you are sitting on. When you feel that undercurrent, maybe it’s okay to simply know that you are on a path, any path. Trusting, like Abram, that God will eventually reveal your future destination, one step at a time. Because when God's spirit is on the move in your life, then surely any road will take you there.