We have this morning the remarkable story of Peter walking on the water – yes, I know Jesus walks on the water first, to demonstrate his Lordship over creation, but I find it really interesting that Peter walks on the water too – he listens to his master's voice, and performs miracles.
Which brings me to Suzy the satnav – one or two of you may have heard that I had passport problems and therefore didn't get to go with my family at the beginning of our holiday, I had to stay behind for a few days to get the paperwork sorted – and because I was alarmed at my family driving around France without two parents to share driving and navigation duties we purchased a satnav to help the process.
The first question was – what to call it? Well, do any of you remember the Enid Blyton Secret Seven books? Gabriel is reading them at the moment and he remembered that there is a character called Suzy, not a member of the seven, but sister to someone who is, but who is both very clever and very annoying – so, Suzy the satnav.
Now when I joined up with the family I drove across France to our next stop in Burgundy, and this was my first experience of driving with satnav assistance. And whilst I was driving, I just couldn't help thinking – there's a sermon here. The satnav is like God – it will tell you what to do and if you follow the instructions then all will be well. You will reach your destination.
More than this – Suzy was very forgiving. If you take a wrong turn, she simply said 'recalculating' and then started giving you new directions from where you now were. I think this is very close to how God reacts to our sin – he is very forgiving, he simply wants us to get to our destination, so whenever we go off down the wrong road he simply responds creatively and says, well, now you're here, go this way.
Of course, it was possible to completely frustrate Suzy. There was one time when we stopped at a rest-stop which wasn't registered in her maps, and all Suzy could say was 'return to highlighted route'. This tied in with some situations that I have experienced where people are so far away from God that the most essential thing to do was simply preach the gospel. There was no question of getting in to the fine detail of life choices, there was simply the over-riding priority of saying – come to Christ, confess that Jesus is Lord, return to the highlighted route.
Now the analogy does break down in the end. In particular there was a moment in Calais trying to get to Eurotunnel when Suzy was unplugged and hurled into the back seat because she was trying to get us somewhere that we didn't want to go – but that wasn't really Suzy's fault, as her map didn't have the latest roadworks in place – and sometimes God says 'it's up to you'. I'm coming to realise that God isn't really into micro-management – that we really do have free-will, and He respects that. Sometimes we just have to make the local choices for ourselves.
But the key thing about Suzy is that listening to her made travelling abroad so much easier and more restful than it would otherwise have been. I had confidence in her – which brings me back to St Peter. When St Peter is concentrating on Jesus, and listening to his voice, he accomplishes miracles – walking on the water. But when he is distracted from Jesus, and becomes afraid, then he begins to sink. The voice of God is more reliable than any satnav. If we listen to it, and if we refuse to listen to any of the voices of fear that want to distract us, then we can perform miracles too. We might even experience our lives as one long holy day...
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