Episode 107 - What's the Point of Going Around and Around in Circles?

Yesterday I did something that I often do on a Sunday afternoon, I watched the Formula 1 Grand Prix. My Mum faithfully sat beside me and watched it with me as she often has done ever since I first started watching it as a young child. When she first started watching it with me she found it hard to understand what I found so entertaining about it. In fact I think she found 22 cars going around and around in circles not only boring, but pointless. What after all was the point? After two hours of racing they all (hopefully) end up exactly where they started and that only after having gone over exactly the same ground somewhere between 44 and 77 times. Of course it seemed pointless to my mum because she had missed the point. The objective was not what she might have wanted to achieve from a Sunday afternoon drive. It was not about where they got to, but how quickly. And every lap the drivers completed may not have got them any further from where they began but which each completed lap they got a step closer to their final objective. Not only that, but with each repeated loop the drivers became better acquainted to circuit they were navigating and were able to go around it faster still.

Okay, I know that to some of you reading this, the whole endeavour of a Formula 1 race will still seem boring and a waste of everyone’s time, but whether or not that is true stands beside my point. Whether or not you enjoy watching motorsport, sometimes life feels like it is just going around and around in circles, doing a lot of travelling but never getting anywhere. Much like a Formula 1 car. When my life feels like this I like to remember my Mum and the Formula 1 because often it’s not that I’m not getting anywhere in life, it’s just that I’m missing the point. Often I think I’m trying to get to some place far away from where I am, when really God wants me to stay exactly where, and to really get to understand the lessons I keep repeating. Other times my misunderstanding of God’s plans and purpose don’t fit nearly so well into this analogy, but the point still remains; I feel like I’m not making any progress because I’m looking at the wrong objective. So when I feel like I’m going around in circles, I like to ask God; “what’s the point?”