Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with a few of our boys from church out at Plains Baptist Assembly. They are there for a boys camp for a few days. I was able to go from station to station with a couple of them – hearing camp staffers teach on tool safety, archery, first aid, sling shots and compass and maps. You know – manly things!
It was great to just hang out with them for a couple of hours – even in the heat.
One of the foundational aspects with each station is that regardless of the topic, the staffer closed his lesson with some spiritual application. The station at which the application came through the most clearly was compass and maps. As I watched the boys trying to manipulate their compass to get the reading they needed, the one thing that we had to continually remind them of was that the needle always points north. They were each given a heading or degree to set on their compass and then told to move toward the area of the field that corresponded to the heading on their compass. It was fun to watch them try and make the compass say what they wanted it to say.
The key is always in the alignment. The compass needle will always point north. We can try to turn the compass but the needle will always point north. The key is not aligning the compass to our direction – the key is aligning ourselves with the compass.
This is very true on our life journey as well. We can take our compass – the Bible – and try and turn it to fit where we think we need to go, but when we do, we end up places we don’t need to be. We must always align ourselves with the compass and not the other way around.
How closely aligned are you with your compass today?
Clay in the Hands 
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