Darren Canning has been ministering at Forks Road East United Church for the past two days. It’s been a Holy Ghost blast!

Yesterday morning, he and I went to a gathering of Revival Leaders at Lakemount Worship Centre in Grimsby. On our way back, we got caught in a horrendous traffic jam.

Sadly, the reason for the slowdown was a serious accident that resulted in the loss of two precious lives.

We wanted to get off the highway and take a faster side road to get to our house. But where do we get off?

I’m from the area. Darren’s not. So the lot fell on me to make the decision. I picked Exit 55, Jordan Road.

For a few minutes, it looked as though we had made the right choice…until we realized that a number of other drivers had the same idea! Welcome to Traffic Jam #2!

“Fear not, dear Darren, I know this area. I know another road we can take. It will be a slightly longer route, but it will be a lot faster.”

Sure enough, we sped through the virtually empty street for a few minutes, but soon had to contend with another convoy of cars that had taken the same route and were now responsible for creating Traffic Jam #3.

I must admit that I was very impressed by Darren’s attitude through all this meandering madness my misguided directions.

He was very calm, even though Mother Nature kept calling and he was doing his utmost to give her a busy signal.

Finally, we, correction, Darren made the decision not to take any more detours. We would simply stick it out on the route we were taking right now, no matter how long it took us to get home.

We finally made it home nearly two hours after leaving Grimsby—a drive which under normal circumstances would have taken no more than 25 minutes.

At last night’s meeting, Darren recalled this incident with the dramatic flair of a raconteur extraordinaire, and then remarked:

“The quickest way through a traffic jam is to stay in it.”

As he pointed out, the real issue was not external–whether we could find a fast alternate route or not.

The critical factor was actually internal—whether we would have the peace inside of us to stick to Traffic Jam Numero Uno and eventually make it back home.

As mentioned earlier, Darren clearly had such peace inside. That is why he did not get rattled by the delay or the detours.

It reminded me of Jesus sleeping in the boat while the storm was tossing the boat and wreaking havoc. The disciples come to him and say: “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?”

Jesus’ response is to simply get up, rebuke the wind and command the sea: “Peace! Be still!”

The reason he could sleep through the storm was because he had a deep abiding peace inside of him. All he had to do was release that peace to the sea. Calm restored. Case closed!

How would you handle an unexpected slowdown on your road to your destiny? Would you focus on the external and chase the fastest side routes?

Or would your internal peace help you to keep going, knowing that the quickest way through a traffic jam is to stay in it?.