Fall is a wonderful time of year back in my old stomping grounds of upstate New York. There is a chill in the air, and the colors are magnificent as the northern red oaks, sugar maples, and American sycamores gradually shed their leaves. Carved pumpkins appear on porches, and the smells of cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg drift out of kitchens. Late October and early November are also when you’ll find folks gathering at local farms to try their hand at a corn maze.

Corn mazes are found all across the United States, and like so many other aspects of our lives, they are becoming more and more complex with technology. Typically, the process for cutting a corn maze starts in early June, soon after the stalks have started breaking ground. Sketches are drawn and paths are created with the goal of making it difficult enough so that it’s not boring, but not so difficult that folks will get discouraged and start plowing their own paths through the leafy green walls.

These day, however, what used to be staked out on a grid or even just eyeballed has now entered the realm of the drone and the GPS. The twists and turns are no longer designed just to confuse the trail-walkers as they move from entrance to exit. Now these labyrinths have evolved into works of art. There are mazes cut to replicate Star Wars scenes, Leonardo da Vinci paintings, sports team logos, and book covers. They are diagrammed to advertise corporate sponsors or give greetings to any alien spaceships that happen to be passing by. Amazing intricacy and minute detail fill the crop plots. However, you’d never know any of this as you are walking through the maze.

When you’re walking the paths, you don’t have the right perspective to visualize the overall design. All you can see are the large corn stalks surrounding you. There is no way to grasp the big picture when you can’t even see what’s happening in the next row over. You don’t have time or inclination to consider how your part fits into the rest. You’re too busy worrying about whether you should go right or left at the next T-crossing, and realizing the fact that you have already passed this same red-and-white painted stake three times before.

The Middle East and a corn maze have a lot in common. This region of the world can be a very confusing place filled with twists and turns, alliances and skirmishes, treaties and treachery. Despite the facts that I live in Jerusalem, the heart of the Middle East, and that I have studied this region for decades, I still sometimes find the area turning right when I thought it would go left, zigging when I thought it would zag. With so much conflict and confusion and war and death, it would be easy to get discouraged, writing the whole Middle East off as a giant mess of a maze that we somehow found our way into but that doesn’t seem to have a way out.

We, as believers in the Word of God, know differently. The Bible is the aerial drone that lets us elevate our perspective above the high-as-an-elephant’s-eye corn and bring it up to God’s level. It is from this lofty height that we are able to see the beauty of God’s plan. It is from here that we see the perfection of his intricate design. And it is from God’s viewpoint found in his Word that we can see that there is both an entrance and an exit from this Middle East maze.

From the time of Esau and Jacob there has been conflict in the region, and it will not end until the day when the King of Kings and Lord of Lords sets his foot back down on the Mount of Olives just to the east of the city that I call home. He will defeat the enemy’s armies and bring peace to the world for a thousand years. After that time, conflict will once again erupt, and it is this war that will be the one to end all wars, ushering in a new heaven and a new earth.

There is method to the madness of the Middle East. In the midst of the unrest, God is moving history forward, and with each step, we progress ever closer to the exit of the maze. Because the Lord has given us a glimpse of his overall design, we are free to worry less about the right and left turns of the path this world is on and focus more on praying for those who are walking it.

-Joel