I was lost on Saturday. 

My daughter Ava was going door to door selling cookies with her Sparks and Girl Guide companions.  My only task was to drop her off on Chotem Crescent.  From there, the girls would head out into the highways and bi-ways in teams to sell their wares from their overflowing wagons, which they pulled along behind them.

Now, I was certain that I had been to Chotem Crescent before, but just to make sure, I yelled back to Tanya as I heading out the car,

“Where’s Chotem?” 

“Silverspring” came the reply. 

“Oh right, Chotem is up by Mother Theresa School,” I thought to myself as I buckled up. 

Ava and I drove around Silverspring for 10 minutes trying to find Chotem.  I even stopped once and asked a local resident for directions.  He had never heard of it.  “He must be new to the neighbourhood,” I thought.  So we drove around some more, certain that we would eventually find the elusive crescent.

After a short while I became worried.  Did the City move Chotem Crescent?  I then remembered that the mother of one of my friends would drive around in circles in a parking lot praying, “Hail Mary full of grace, help me find a parking space” until eventually a parking space would open up close to the store.

I chuckled at the thought, because if you drive around long enough, eventually your desired parking spot will open up with or without our Blessed Mother’s help.

Nonetheless, prayer seemed to be my only recourse at the time.

I said a short prayer, and it dawned on me:  I could pray, hoping that Chotem Crescent will appear around the next turn all I want, but if I’m in the wrong neighbourhood, it’ll never happen.

I saw a few cars in the parking lot at Ebeneezer Baptist Church and decided to pull in to ask to look at the map in the phone book.  My face reddened as I realized that I was in the wrong neighbourhood…Chotem Crescent is in Arbor Creek…Chotem Crescent is five blocks from our home…no wonder the name was so familiar to me…in the past nine years I have been either driving or walking past it almost every day.

How often do we face challenges in our lives all the while believing that we “know” the answer?  If we just did this more or that less, our desired result will be achieved.  So we do this more, or that less, over and over, never achieving our desired result.  So what do we do?  We do more of this and less of that because we “know” this is the right way to get what we want.

It is precisely this “self-deception,” this “knowing” the answer that keeps us stuck. 

We are like the father of a girl in Sparks driving around the wrong neighbourhood convinced that the crescent he is seeking is just around the next corner.  It is an exercise in absolute futility.  Only until we check our assumptions against an accurate map can we be liberated from the “self-deception” that keeps us driving in circles looking for an answer that isn’t there.

As Christians, we have access to accurate maps.  We have the Bible, the teachings of our Church, the writings of the Saints, the sacraments and the inner voices of both our conscience and the Holy Spirit.  When we check our assumptions about life against these accurate maps, we may just well discover that we are in the wrong neighbourhood.   This discovery liberates us from our real problem, the problem of not knowing that we have a problem.

The problem isn’t “out there,” the problem is in our belief that we are right.

So please, if you ever see my driving around town, wave me over and ask me if I know where I’m going.