“A Change in my ETA!”
This morning I had to drive to Beaumont. When I left the city of Round Rock, I plugged in my destination and it gave me my ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival). The more I drove the time would adjust based on my journey. But when I got close to Houston, my time jumped up by 15 minutes. The reason it jumped up and added more time was because there was traffic that was hindering my progress. I have had experience with Houston early morning traffic before so I tried to make it before the traffic started to avoid any delays.
As I was driving and noticing the changes in my ETA, I began to think about how that correlated to life and this journey we are on. We are not our creator so we don’t have knowledge of when our ETA into the next realm will take place. We have our starting point but our endpoint of life is unknown. However, we plan for our own ETA based on where we think we may end up. We plan for the future, we plan for retirement, we plan for things in this life. We have and set goals for different ETA’s in our life. We have endpoints of where we need to be and when we need to get there. One thing I have noticed is that although we plan, things may hinder our determined destination time that are out of our control. There are a few things I noticed about a changing ETA:
(1) It can change in a second. At one point the time was 8:40 am and then the next time I looked down it was 8:55 am. A 15 minute change happened in a very quick time. Things in life can change dramatically and drastically in a twinkling of an eye! Don’t get too complacent that you will automatically meet your desired ETA. Stumbling blocks and wrecks can happen unexpectedly and cause issues. This is true in life as well.
(2) It is not your fault. When my ETA changed it had nothing to do with me. It changed because something ahead of me was causing traffic to back up and I had to adhere to the changes because I had to go that way! Sometimes we can’t control our ETA! We have to endure and adjust to the change whether we like it or not. Here is another point. Sometimes it is our fault because when we stop for our own desires it will cause our ETA to be pushed back.
(3) God can give you another direction. What I have learned is that sometimes God will keep you on that path and you have to stay there until the traffic clears. But sometimes He will do what happened to me this morning. As I was leaving Houston the GPS told me to take an exit off of the highway. I wondered why would I do that. I was obedient and I did it by faith. It took me down some city streets and back turns. I kept asking myself why. Then I looked down at the map, and the route that I was previously on had a message, “31 minutes slower!” Praise God. The GPS knew what was up ahead and re-routed me. I ended up back on the same route but I took a short detour that saved me a lot of time. I followed by faith not knowing why, but eventually God showed me why I had to make a detour.
In life we won’t always know why our destination and ETA changes. But when you trust God and walk by faith, He knows what is up ahead and He will maneuver you through to save you some unexpected delays in your journey!
Be Blessed!
Michael O. Oyedokun II