Distracted

The last 2 1/2 weeks I got the privilege of traveling with the dental team up the river about 24 hours for the sole purpose of taking pictures. Here is a short story from that trip:

It was Monday, our last day of clinic. We just finished up clinic in the small village of Pueto Nuevo, and were headed to our next location. Originally, we were supposed to go to three villages that day, but for the sake of time, we decided to only go to two. We were traveling in our boat along a side channel of the main river. Julio was steering the boat at the time, and I was sitting in the front. All of a sudden we headed toward the side of the river where there was all these tree branches and bushes growing up in the water. My first instinct was that we would turn out of it, but we didn’t. We headed straight into the tree branches and bushes. I didn’t have time to say anything, but even if I did, Julio wouldn’t understand it in English. I just ducked as low as possible. The engine was cut, but we continued our path deeper into the brush until we finally stopped. Now we were in a mess. Everyone started pushing a pulling tree branches, or whatever they could get their hands on to try and get us our. Finally what got us out, was Julio standing on the side of the boat, pushing a tree branch while he walked on the side of the boat until he reached the front and we were mostly out of the tangle of branches and bushes. Julio said that the reason for him steering us off course, was because he got distracted. We all had a good laugh about our situation, and then continued along our way to the next village.
Our trip, traveling down the river, is a lot like life. We can be going along fine, then for some reason or another we take our eyes off of God, and we end up in a big mess. All it took was a few seconds of going off course for us to be stuck at the side of the river. So it is in our spiritual life, when we take our eyes off of God for just a few moments, what a mess we can end up in. Then we have to call upon God to get us out of the mess that we got ourselves into. Let us not get distracted by the things of this world, not even for a moment, lest we lose sight of God and our eternal home, Heaven!