Wrong turns, new scenery, and ruined for this world

It isn't that I enjoy making the wrong turns in a web search.  It's that I often find stuff by accident, and discover enjoyment in a new place.

My latest wrong turn took me to Wrecked for the Ordinary, an online magazine about (and by) people who won't settle for comfortable pop Christianity, but instead embrace radical, passionate personal choices to change their worlds for the better.  Nice to see someone with a vision similar to my own.

It isn't that this guy Joseph in the Bible enjoyed being sold as a slave by his own brothers.  By any measure, his life was wrecked.  But God showed him a new life in his exile, and used the whole sorry affair to save a family of hundreds, the first Israelis, from starvation.

It isn't that I enjoy waking up, wide awake, at 3AM.  It isn't that I enjoyed a couple of major heart interventions over the last 13 years.  Or lots of other bad stuff, caused variously by choices of my own, others, God, and that Bad Guy.  It's just that God almost always meets me in my unintended destinations, and that makes them pretty good destinations to "accidentally" arrive at.  Wasn't my plan, maybe.  But He sure has a way of showing me good new scenery.   

Sometimes the scenery (like this one in the graffiti room at Passion 2006) makes me realize I’m ruined for the old world I knew so well, and sometimes in a moment, my whole world changes.  That moment really was a realization point and turning point in my life. I'd seen a new country, and I was completely ruined for the old one.  Never been back.  Old country's gone.

Maybe you've noticed that pattern in your own life?  Here's hoping your next "wrong" turn turns out to be a great one.