How did I get here? It took me seven months to finally sit one night and ask myself that question. Seven months of busyness led me to a place of utter exhaustion. I had let myself get hijacked, not only by my elderly parents’ lives and my need to be involved in everything that concerned them, but by the obsessive renovation projects I committed myself to in their apartment—removing paper, wallpapering, painting, drilling this, hammering that, shopping here, shopping there. All in all, I had been too busy to remember God, pause and feed my now drained and lethargic soul.

How did I get here? Bare before God, unable to hide my emaciated soul who for months scarcely prayed or spent time in His presence. In that one o’clock in the morning deafening silent night, bare as the leafless trees that had been robbed of their splendor by the fierce winter season that had come in full force, I acknowledged my depravity. I surrendered and prayed “God, I’ve messed things up. For months, I prioritized everything but You. I was wrong and I’m sorry I let it happen. Heavenly Father, help me get reconnected to You and nourish me again.” 

It was a simple prayer but the peace of the Holy Spirit filled my heart, as if a refresh button had been pressed. Drifting away can be very subtle, and if we’re not careful, we can find ourselves far from that original place God intends us to be in – the same is true for planes. Ask any pilot flying a plane and they will quickly explain that a matter of only a few degrees can be deadly. Unfortunately, this was the case for the 1979 passenger jet carrying 257 people. Unbeknownst to the pilot, there was a minor two-degree error in the flight coordinates and sadly the jet crashed into the side of a volcano, killing everyone on board.

We would do well to remain grounded in the Word of God, for man should not live by bread alone but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4), and as we are encouraged in Hebrews 2:1, We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.