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BY J. DAVID ROBERTS

Here is how Eugene Peterson (formerly a Presbyterian pastor in Bel Air,) paraphrases Ephesians 4:1 in The Message: “While I’m locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk — better yet, run — on the road God called you to travel.” Hmmm, just think about that passage: “the road God called you to travel.”

Like many people today, before I plan a trip I go online to a mapping site where a computer tells me which roads I should take and exactly (or so it suggests) how many minutes it will take me to get there.

Unfortunately, sometimes this computer-generated map demonstrates the limits of technology. I remember the gist of the words of a retired IBM executive who headed the first church computer committee I worked with: “Remember that a computer is not a human being; it’s a machine. It has no common sense, and it will do exactly what a person tells it to do whether or not it makes any sense at all, and it will continue doing it until a person tells it to stop.”

As I plan my trips, sometimes in frustration I just give up on getting the online mapping site to use the roads that I want to use and just get out my trusty paper map. You remember those, don’t you?

The world tells us to be independent, travel our own roads and not let anyone give us directions. We’re to “do our own thing” and not be swayed by others. “Follow your dream!” we’re told — even if in our fallibility our dream can lead us into harmful and even dangerous areas.

Sometimes we need to heed warnings from people who have been there before us (people in Scripture as well as in modern times), who offer signs that point to danger by saying things like “Bridge Out” or “Falling Rock” or “Wrong Way.”

God has indeed called each of us to travel a road, and everyone’s road will be a little different even though we are in view of each other for much of the trip.

“But wouldn’t it be more adventurous to just follow our own road rather than the one God has called us to travel?” some will ask. “Isn’t God’s road kind of boring?”

The road that God has called us to travel is not boring. It has its ups and downs, its curves and its surprises, its excitement and its beauty. But the road that God has called us to travel will also lead us to where we are called to end up, which is home again with Christ our Lord and our sainted loved ones.

Besides, God’s road can be much more interesting. How was I to know growing up in New Orleans that I would end up being a minister in Maryland (of all places) for the last 24 years — the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere. But God knew. And I’m sure glad God led me to be here, traveling such an interesting road among you.

The Rev. J. David Roberts is pastor of the Maryland Line and Parke Memorial UMCs near the Pennsylvania border in the Baltimore Suburban District.