Where Are You Headed?

We have entered the “resolution zone,” when everyone is eager to accomplish something. Yet, for many, these ambitions remain mere wishes, hopes, and dreams.

If only a genie could emerge from a bottle—granting us the power to shed 30 pounds, feel 20 years younger, or become a millionaire with a single wave of its hand.

But life offers no genies, no magic elixirs.

There is only direction.

Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass captures this truth.

Having tumbled into a strange, topsy-turvy world, Alice finds herself at a crossroads. Lost and uncertain, she encounters the Cheshire Cat and asks,

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

The Cat replies:

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”

When Alice admits she doesn’t know, the Cat responds:

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

This is the dilemma of our time. We yearn to reach somewhere, but we often cannot define where that somewhere is.

It is far more important to know where you want to go than how you’ll get there. Circumstances will change, and challenges will arise, but a clear destination allows you to adjust your course.

Consider a ship at sea. When a storm blows it off course, the crew doesn’t despair. They replot their bearing because they know their destination.

The Apostle Paul understood this principle deeply. His life was full of unexpected turns and hardships, yet his direction never wavered. He wrote to the Philippians:

“Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13–14, ESV)

This unwavering sense of purpose shaped his life. It kept him from places he once wanted to go, altered his plans, and even led him into prisons—where he witnessed God’s work in unimaginable ways.

Paul’s clear direction gave him the strength to endure and the clarity to say at the end of his life, “I have finished the course.”

What about you?

What direction are you headed?

Answer that question, and the hows will take care of themselves.