Ep 125: Misorientation

What can a messed-up migration teach us about wandering away from God? Let’s talk about that in just a sec.

Welcome to the show. I’m Daniel Dalp, and this is For Your Sunday Morning Drive, the short podcast with the goal of providing some motivation, direction, and encouragement on your way to worship and helping you to recenter your mind on those spiritual things on a Sunday morning just like this. I’m thankful you chose to spend some time with us this morning.

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Let’s go ahead and get the show on the road today. This is episode 125: “Misorientation.”

Let’s go to church.

The song you just heard was that of the yellow-green vireo. In the fall, like many other birds, they head south to wait out the winter months in a much warmer climate.

However, some members of its species sometimes get turned around and migrate the wrong way. In fact, they travel the very opposite way from which they intend to go. Scientists call this phenomenon “misorientation.”

For example, a bird that has a usual winter migration in, say, South America, may, due to misorientation, end up in California. And according to some cursory research, it’s one of the most common errors in migration patterns.

But what’s really interesting is that when it does occur, it occurs most often in birds that are going through their first migration. These misplaced birds are called “vagrants.”

And the tragic thing is that while many vagrants do end up finding the proper migration course, some remain forever displaced, lost. They never return to their native range.

They are, it seems, stuck where they don’t belong, and all it took to get them there was a few mistakes and a turn in the wrong direction.

For these birds, these vagrants, misorientation is unintentional. But spiritually, for us and others, misorientation can happen too.

And personally, I think that’s what makes this illustration so striking. Not just because I get to nerd out over a bird episode, but because we don’t necessarily have to make a conscious decision to leave God in order to find ourselves very far from Him.

Sometimes all it takes is a slight change in direction, and that can start somewhere so simple.

A neglected prayer life. Less time spent in God’s Word. A habit that we know isn’t right but we continue to tolerate anyway. Maybe it’s a friendship that slowly pulls us away, or a worldly desire that begins to occupy more and more of our heart.

And none of these things may seem like a dramatic departure from God when they begin. But direction matters.

If you’re pointed in the wrong direction, every step you take is taking you further and further away from where you intend to be.

And unlike these birds, our spiritual misorientation isn’t always unintentional. Sometimes we know exactly what direction we’re headed. We simply don’t stop to ask whether it’s the right one.

We can become so accustomed to our course that we stop noticing that we’ve changed it.

The scary thing about spiritual misorientation is that we can be moving without realizing we’re lost. We’re still moving, we’re still busy, we’re still going somewhere. But we can be getting farther and farther away from God the whole time.

The question we need to ask ourselves, though, is how do we know if we’re headed in the right direction spiritually in the first place?

Well, we can’t determine our spiritual direction simply by looking at where we are today. We have to compare our course with the direction that God has given us.

Scripture repeatedly calls us to examine ourselves. 2 Corinthians 13:5 says, “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith.”

Friends, we need God’s Word to function almost like a sort of spiritual compass.

In Hebrews 2:1, it says, “Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away.”

Highlight that word there: drift.

Drifting doesn’t require a decision. You don’t have to actively row away or, in this circumstance, fly away from shore. You just have to stop moving towards it.

The good news is that being misoriented doesn’t mean that we have to remain lost.

One of those birds may become a vagrant, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it can never find its way back.

And spiritually, God has given us the ability to recognize when we’ve gotten off course and correct. That’s the whole biblical principle of repentance.

It’s not merely about feeling bad about where we’ve ended up, but repentance is about recognizing that we’ve been going the wrong direction and then turning around.

Maybe the question this morning isn’t, “How far away from God am I?” but rather, “Which direction am I heading?”

Because if we’re headed towards God, even if we’re not where we want to be yet, we’re moving in the right direction.

But if you’re headed away from God, understand it doesn’t matter how slowly you’re going; you’re still going further away.

And that’s scary, because we don’t have to make a dramatic decision to become spiritually lost. Sometimes we simply have to keep traveling in the wrong direction.

And the longer we travel, the farther away we find ourselves.

So before we ask ourselves where we are, perhaps we ought to ask ourselves, “Which direction am I going?”

And if we don’t like the answer, we need to fly home as fast as we possibly can.

Well, those are my thoughts for your Sunday morning drive.

Now it’s time to hear yours. Our discussion questions for this week are:

What role does God’s Word play in keeping us on the right course?

Why is it more important to consider our direction than simply where we are right now?

What are some signs that a person may be slowly moving away from God?

And I’ll throw it over to Evelyn for this week’s kids’ question:

What are some things you can do to stay close to God?

Thank you for listening. Thank you for making some time in your week to travel along with us.

Check your heading. Check your direction. And if you need to, come home.

I hope you have a great day. I hope you have a fantastic week, and I’ll see you Sunday.