How easy it is to get sidetracked. To start off doing one thing, then answer a phone call and start doing something else, then stop for a coffee and forgetting what you were doing before the phone rang drink up and leave those first things forgotten and unfinished, and start doing something else. Of course, you may be far more disciplined and organized than I am, but getting side tracked is easy to fall into. It may happen for the best of reasons, but we still get off the track. We do it all the time. In our actions and even in our conversation.

In a previous appointment I lectured and ran training classes. Each lecture or training session would have a planned objective and outcome - yet so often a student would raise a question that would distract us - suddenly I would realize that we had spent over half of the lecture discussing something that really had nothing to do with it. As interesting as it may have been it had been a classic ‘red herring’. (A red herring was actually a kipper used to distract hunting dogs and harriers from the trail of their quarry and lead them in the wrong direction).

In Luke Chapter 9, we read that “Jesus resolutely set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Jesus is heading for Jerusalem and the cross. Jesus had a very specific direction laid out for him, a journey that he will not be sidetracked from or drawn away by the red herrings of the pharisees.

God has a specific journey for each one, a direction he wants us to follow, not to be distracted from.