The Car Illustration: where are you headed?

After much delay I finally got my learners permit in August. The only thing I have demolished so far is a trash can, so I am loving driving and my family endures. The only downside to driving is learning to control our cars, which are all at least twenty years old. This can become quite a chore; especially when you’re driving the car with the impossibly slow accelerator. I am always frustrated when trying to get this car up a hill; I haven’t mastered yet the technique of adjusting the gas to whatever the incline is. I always step on the gas too late and barely get over the hill, or too soon and get the whole spiel on how expensive gas is and how I shouldn’t try to speed up so quick. Either way, I never get over the hill smoothly and my speed is always fluctuating.

It seems in our spiritual journey we can often feel as if we are always fluctuating; sometimes we are speeding over the hill smoothly; stepping confidently on the gas and just trusting God that the car won’t fall apart. Other times we are at the bottom of the hill; uninspired to use our precious gas to speed up and keep a constant speed. We are inexperienced and don’t know how to handle our lives and where to turn in our spiritual quest; much like an old, slow car that should have died years ago. But before we are sent out to drive by ourselves we have to (painfully) go through that period of training with an expert by our side. We are in control of the car, and yet Someone else is in control of us; guiding us, pushing us, and sometimes yelling for us to stop. Without our Guide beside us we would have slammed into failure long ago… losing the only means of transportation we had.

I have finally got the feel for when to speed up so that I can make it up the hill smoothly and at a constant speed. Even before I’m down the last hill I have to step on the gas to glide over the next hill… and in places, I’m constantly having to adjust so that I keep the speed the same. No one likes hills, low places or ditches, but like it or not, our spiritual standing with Christ will always be a series of hills and curves, and the only way for us to get over those hills is to listen to our Guide beside us, and trust that the car won’t fall apart.