After a 4-year long pause caused by the pandemic and other factors, last Monday I decided to go wild again. I mean hillwalking in the great Scottish wilderness. My hill of choice was located deep in rural Perthshire, an area I had never been to before. In such cases, I use the sat nav to get to my destination. I set it up before I set off (for safety and convenience) but I rely on it mainly for the final stretch only. Last Monday I expected to drive along the A92 dual carriageway all the way to Perth, and from there wind my way up to the starting point of my walk. So I was rather surprised when my sat nav took me off the motorway well before Dundee and through the countryside. Before you laugh at me as one of those dafties who religiously follow their sat nav straight into the open sea, I have to say that – unlike the sat nav systems of the past – mine is constantly live-fed traffic information using big data. It means that it knows what’s going on on the roads all the time. So, I followed the suggested route through the countryside and that was quite arduous. The roads were narrow, winding left and right, up and down. It could have been a scenic route but I had to keep my eyes on the road rather than admire the scenery. Several hours later, having climbed my chosen hill (a great day out, incidentally!) I decided to go my own way on returning home. My plan was simple: drive back to Perth and then back to Aberdeen along the much straighter A96. I set up my sat nav just in case and – a bit worryingly – it kept insisting on going through the countryside. But I stubbornly stuck to my plan and hit a set of roadworks in Perth first and then in Dundee, when I got stuck in a huge traffic jam. Now I knew why my always up-to-date sat nav had offered me an alternative route in the morning and kept nagging me in the afternoon. Although the morning leg of my journey was quite arduous, I was moving forward; in the afternoon I was going nowhere…
However imperfect and flawed the experience, it illustrates quite well the relationship between troubles, challenges and difficulties in life with trusting God. Life can throw a lot of the former at us and quite rightly sometimes we can feel overwhelmed. Naturally, we tend to look for easy solutions and understandably complain about difficulties. Occasionally we address those who can ease our pain and sort out our problems. But quite often we moan as if only for the sake of it. However, we can always bring our complaints to Jesus who takes them all and brings them to the Father in Heaven. Last Sunday we heard him crying out on our behalf: “God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Today’s first reading presented him as the one who carries our sins and troubles in order to ease such a burden for us. In a moment we will bring the world’s communities to God in the solemn prayer of intercessions. But then you will be able to make it much more personal. When we venerate the cross, you can bring forward your palm cross and lay it at the foot of the cross as a twofold symbol: you bring your troubles and you trust that God will lead you through them to your final destination: life eternal.