There’s something freeing about your life pointing in the right direction. You know, when your goals and aspirations are coming out ahead of your everyday challenges and draining stressors. Pointing the right direction reminds me of this family classic photo when I was around three years old.

Yep, that’s me in my frilly white dress, sitting in my white car (well, it once was orange-yellow for my brothers, but I think my dad painted it white for his little girl). Looking at this 1960s photo today, I noticed for the first time that I am not looking at Mom and the camera. I wonder if I am looking at my grandparents and waving in excitement. It was Easter and I was dressed like a sweet princess. We already had our chocolate candies and we were ready for church.

Distracted by the Littlest Things

Yet something or someone was distracting me in our yard. It looks like I am pointing at something or trying to curl my fingers to show that I was a big girl three. I have to pause and chuckle as I type this. After all these years, I am still one of those individuals whose creative mind gets to spinning and the littlest things can distract me.

I’m talking food crumbs on the counter, the guest bathroom toilet paper roll with a half-torn sheet, dog nose prints on the window. Mercy! Don’t get me started. Thank God, literally, that He helps keep me pointed in the right direction.

With Easter just a couple days away, I thought I’d share some timely words about helping our lives stayed pointed in the right direction. I borrow this excerpt from Paul David Tripp’s 40-day Lenten devotional, Journey to the Cross.

Where do you tend to point the finger of blame? The gospel forces you to admit that your biggest problems in life exist inside you and not outside you, and because that is true, you need more than situational, relational, or location change.

Lent is all about pointing the finger in the right direction. It is about humble self-examination, honest confession, and grief over sin that causes you to seek and celebrate the grace Jesus was willing to suffer and die for. Because this is a season of mournful personal confession, it can also be for you a season of spiritual renewal and rejoicing. Renewal happens because confession causes you to see things as they really are, and in doing so, to begin to confess and address things that have long needed to be confessed and addressed. The more you see your sin, the more you will respond tenderly to other sinners and want for them the same grace you have received. And as you taste new life, you will begin to celebrate, in fresh new ways, the grace that is yours in Christ Jesus.

Recalibrating Our Direction

May we all take stock and see things are they really in our lives. If we have confessions to make and fences to mend, let’s get after it. Spring and Easter share a season of promising renewal and fresh starts. Even a time to recalibrate our finger of blame and point our lives in the right direction.

Where are you headed these days?