Sep
5
Unknown Destination
Filed Under Devotional
In software engineering circles, the Microsoft interviewing process has gained some notoriety. I went through it twice myself and can attest to some of the practices that are often mentioned. They do tend to ask odd, solve-on-a-whiteboard kind of problems. It’s clear that they are assessing your problem-solving skill and ability to work towards a reasonable solution in a short period of time.
One of the particular wrinkles I had thrown at me was the issue of dealing with vague or non-existent requirements. The interviewer wanted to know if I could deal with being asked to do something very open-ended and unspecified. Some people freeze with a blank canvas. Some people are lost without some kind of structure.
This is a more difficult kind of problem, but you have to come at it from two directions. First, can you infer what the client wants from other sources of information or by extrapolating from the rest of the specification? Second, only do what you’ve been asked. Don’t let your mind run wild trying to figure out the next three steps.
This is a similar problem for some of us when we have clearly heard God’s voice, but we have no clue what He has in mind. Some of us will dig our heels in until we have a better idea of where the road leads. Heck, some of us just want to be able to see the road!
“Now the LORD had said to Abram:
‘Get out of your country,
From your family
And from you father’s house,
To a land I will show you.
[...]
So Abram departed as the LORD has spoken to him,[...]” Genesis 12:1,4a
God said, “Leave where you are. I’ll tell you your destination later,” and Abram just went. That was the ultimate in open-ended journeys. He didn’t know where he was headed, what he should take with him, or how long he’d be gone. He was prepared to take everything and never return precisely because he didn’t know what the final destination was.
Be ready to deal with a step into the unknown. That’s exactly the kind of confident faith we are called to have.