Daily Devotionals

There is a moment at the start of anything new when you realise you do not know what you are doing. A woman who changed careers in her forties described her first week as walking into a room where everyone else already spoke the language. She had been capable for twenty years. Now she was the one asking where things were kept, and it cost her something every time.

David wrote these lines as a man who had been leading people for a long time, and he still opened his mouth to ask. Show me your ways. Teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth. He was not confused about who God was. He simply refused to assume he had reached the end of needing to be taught.

Notice the verbs. Show. Teach. Guide. Every one of them is something done to a person who is willing to be moved, and not one of them is a thing you achieve by trying harder on your own.

You may have reached the stage where asking feels like an admission. People expect you to know by now. Somewhere along the way, not knowing started to feel like falling behind rather than like being alive. This week begins by handing that back. A learner is not someone who has failed to arrive. A learner is someone still close enough to be led.