Following the Wrong Leader

Thursday afternoon, I left Charlotte, North Carolina, with my grandson Sam. He was driving his gray Honda Civic and I was following in my white Buick Envision SUV. We were headed back to my place in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, a good two hour journey.
          I had made this trip many times, and when Remount Road intersected with U.S. Highway 74, I knew to turn left toward the entry ramp unto Interstate 85 South. So I eased over into the left turn lane. But that Honda Civic did not; it stayed in the center lane and went straight through the intersection. “He must know a short cut,” I surmised to myself, altering lanes in the middle of the intersection to follow the gray Honda Civic. 
Two blocks later, he turned left into a residential neighborhood.  “Maybe he is stopping to see somebody on the way out of town,” I thought, which sounded reasonable for a high school senior just weeks away from his graduation. I followed the car meekly, trusting my grandson.
He pulled into the parking lot of an apartment complex, and so did I. Then, he found a parking place and so did I. I sat there in the car for a few minutes, not noticing if Sam exited his car or not. “Am I in the right place?” I thought. So I pulled out of my parking spot and, looking for Sam, pulled up behind his car. I saw nobody.
As I sat there, waiting and wondering, I thought, “I wonder if I might ever have a need to identify Sam’s car. Maybe I will take a picture of the license plate.”  A reasonable if unusual thought, but I reached for my phone, rolled down the window, and took one picture. See above.
As I put my phone away, wondering where Sam might be, the door of that Honda Civic opened and a strange man got out. By “strange” I mean it was somebody I did not know. It was not Sam. He faced me, and said, “What’s going on? You have followed me all the way home, and now you are taking pictures of my car. Who are you and what’s going on?”
I was, of course, surprised and mortified.
           At that moment, my phone rang. Sam’s name appeared on the screen. I surmised immediately what had happened. Sam had indeed turned at the proper intersection, and some other driver in an identical car evidently adjacent to Sam at the intersection had gone straight through on his way to his home. Somewhere, I had been distracted, lost sight of the car I was following, and took off behind the car of a stranger. 
And Sam was calling me to inquire, “Where are you, papa?”
I did not answer the phone but spoke to the stranger. “I am so sorry. I was following my grandson Sam in his Honda Civic and must have gotten confused. I ended up following the wrong car through that intersection. I am sorry.”
“My name is John,” the stranger said, and I responded, “My name is Dwight Moody.  I am sorry this has happened.”  I paused for a moment, then turned toward him again. Before I could speak, he asked, “Need directions?”  And I responded, “Yes, to Interstate 85.”
“Left there, two blocks and left again. Four or five blocks and left again on Freedom Road. that will take you to the interstate.” I said thanks and took off, embarrassed. Two hours plus later I arrived home, a full 20 minutes after Sam got there. He never called me, and I never called him. Two traffic incidents on the highway slowed me down.
          In plain speech, I got distracted, went in a direction I knew in my gut was wrong, and wound up in a strange place, face to face with a stranger. I am glad he was not a gun-carrying man. It was a harmless incident, in the big scheme of things but also a helpful one, also in the big scheme of things. I am not the only one who got distracted and followed the wrong leader. Our country is full of people like me, unwittingly following the wrong leader. Only difference is, where they end up, with our country in tow, is not so innocent, not so humorous, not so forgettable. We are headed into a dangerous place, and people we are meeting are carrying guns, and wearing masks, and dropping bombs, and blowing up much that is good and necessary, and wrecking our country with a godless combination of cruelty, corruption, and chaos.
We are following the wrong leader. 
Dump Trump and Follow Jesus.