A Drive Home One Day

My sinful attitude and nature still amazes me. I don't know why, I've lived with it all my life and have been cognitively aware of it for many years now. But still, I am a sinner. And that was made very clear to me on my most recent drive home.

It began with the lady that pulled out in front of me on her cell phone. It really isn't a giant thing, but I can't effectively communicate to you how steamed I got at that simple driving incident. In my anger I wished many driving perils upon her and all her future generations. And then it hit me, I'm sinning. I am angry (not a sin) and wishing terrible things for this lady who may have been talking to the Dr. from the ICU telling her that she needs to rush in because there wasn't much time for her loved one.

But because she was a lady that cut me off and because she was on a cell phone, in an instant of anger I realized that I am a sexist jerk who has no idea what it is like to put himself in someone else's shoes.

And then, not too much farther down the road in my quick drive home I noticed someone walking on the side of the road. She too was a lady. A very pretty lady. A very pretty lady wearing a very tight shirt and very short shorts. I think I took three long looks at her as I passed her by and then one more for good luck in the rear view mirror as I was farther down the road.

And then it hit me, I'm sinning. I wasn't undressing this gal in my mind I want you to understand that. But I was lingering on her shapes and curves enough for me to understand that I had forgotten something. Here's what I forgot in my moment of "window shopping"...I forgot about the beauty of my own wife AND I forgot that the lady I was looking at was also someone else's daughter or someone else's mother or someone else's grandchild.

She is not a piece of meat for me to admire, she is a child of God, someone for whom Jesus came and died on the cross for. And I forgot that in that 30 seconds that this incident took.

And then a little farther down the road, just before I got home, I was slowed down by an elderly woman who could barely see over her steering wheel. And again anger slowly started to rise up in me as I drove. I think I thought something like this, "I can't believe that she is allowed to even be driving! Somebody needs to take her license away."

Now she hadn't done anything particularly wrong. She wasn't driving erratically. She wasn't even really going slow, honestly...she was just driving the speed limit. Her great trespass against me - she slowed me down. I was speeding, she was abiding by the law. And to top it off, she was elderly.

And then it hit me, I was sinning again. This older woman made me (by the fact that I was behind her) slow my life down (and I didn't like it). I realized that I sin all the time. I speed too much. But that is just a small part of a bigger picture, I speed with my life too. I am always on hyper drive it seems. I don't slow down enough and I miss a lot of life as a result.

This older woman's other crime was that she was old. I realized in this small span of time that I am a bigot. I don't like older people. I realized in those few moments that I drove behind her that I have had some pretty negative run-ins with elderly people that have soured me just enough to lump most of them into the same boat. And that is wrong.

Wow! What a drive home. What a wretched worm of a sinner I am that I can't even drive less than 10 miles to my home without falling into sin within the confines of my car. (Just imagine what I am capable of when I am not driving!)

In that short drive home I was made to realize that I am still in need of my Savior. I am still in need of Jesus' saving grace. I am not that far progressed beyond when Jesus first saved me 24 years ago.

Everything else in my life I do at a fast pace, but when it comes to growing and maturing for the Lord I move at the slowest of snail's paces. I am a very, very slow learner in these things.

Each and every day I need to do what Paul commands for us in Romans 12:1-2..."Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will." (NIV)

I need to climb back up on the altar again and burn up all my sinful self and dedicate the rest of my ash-ridden self to God's purposes.