Worship

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Before Christ, I drove as I lived, demonically. Once on the road, I was constantly looking to the end of the journey, never understanding that every moment in every circumstance was a gift and an opportunity for life. My head would swirl with all the negative possibilities that the journey offered: traffic jams, accidents, "Sunday drivers", tailgaters, failures of my vehicle of all kinds, and an inability to meet whatever arbitrary deadlines I had accepted from others or placed on myself. If those concerns were not enough, I also had this underlying fear of not competing with other aggressive drivers. As in life, I would allow rudeness and perceived challenges to my manhood to affect my choices.

If the truth of my fears were displayed on my license plates, there would have been a back plate that read "IDIOT" for tailgaters to agree with and a front plate that read "MANIAC" for the validation of those I tailgated. I wasted so much precious energy though frustration, anger, and fear. I was simultaneously generating the same waste in those I was infecting by my driving spirits.

Any road I am on, whether in a vehicle or in my daily walk of life, is a shared path of human beings, human doings, human thinkings, and, most importantly, human feelings. Each sojourner's state affects the states of their fellow travelers. Each sojourner's outward directions and moving patterns can not help but infringe upon or bless those immediately around them and even those coming far behind them. If my driving mannerisms cause an accident, that can bind up and delay those back down the road in a huge way. If my driving relates to the Lord and others as I relate at a worship service, how much peace can be present in me and in those who surround and follow me on my road?

The Lord has given me such a change in my driving heart, both in slower city driving and seemingly slow highway conditions.

When I am restrained by a red light and am first in a left hand turn lane, I try to stop further back from the front line of that lane. This allows those who are turning left in front of me to get though the intersection faster than if they had to slow for a sharper turn around my bumper. I also seek to keep walkers in a higher priority than myself. It often takes intestinal fortitude to hold back a long line of pressed and pressing drivers to give pedestrians their right of way, especially at crosswalks not controlled by a stop light sequence. But they have the right of way. They are moving slower through their lives than I am in my speedy chariot, and they are vulnerable to injury by my mass of moving metal. Even walking past the front hood of a car that has stopped too close to the crosswalk lines gives a walker peace-stealing tension. Caring for slower movers seems a priority the Lord would appreciate and it keeps me from getting into a too fast mode in my own journey.

The highway is a whole different world of travel. He often leads me to pray for the drivers around me, even when all seems to be going smoothly. I stay a good distance behind cars in front of me. This allows me to always feel the wide open spaces, even in extremely slow traffic conditions. I never feel the full stressful affects of a traffic jam anymore. This distance also prevents the driver in front of me from taking on the pressure I am tempted to take on when I am followed too closely.

I stay in the slowest lane I can in consideration of the drivers who are being driven by their own demons. When I see a zooming and weaving driver, especially those on two wheels, I pray the Lord's protection over them and those they may be frightening.

Inevitably, there are times when my pace frustrates someone in back of me. I've had many ideas for bumper stickers that would help to reconcile my driving choices with the urgers behind me. One that the Lord gave me is, "Get me behind thee!" When I am tailgated, I first pray that I do not take on the oppressions of the driver behind me. Then I pray for the tailgater. I ask the Lord to release the driver from whatever pressures are driving them. I ask that they be empowered to relax into whatever peace is possible for them.

As He is bringing me more and more life and clarity, I find myself increasingly ready to get in the faster lanes and live in my old, destructive urgencies. This happened recently. I had made a commitment and saw no reason to not get up and go. There wasn't much traffic and my van was responding with surprising quickness. All seemed well until I noticed I was doing 85, even though it felt like only 65. I approached the three lanes of Highway 1 North at Airport Blvd. This is where I always move to the right and let the world go by. I was late, but, still, I chose to fall back into the intentionally unrushed pattern He had established in me over the preceding years. Just after I did so, a Highway Patrol car pulled along side me, hesitated, and then moved on up the hill ahead of me. I know now, for certain, which lane the Lord wants me to stay in, no matter how late I choose to feel and no matter how critical time wants to become in me.

The Lord's Will is always peace for me and Loving through me, both in my drive times and in my movings of any sort through this vale.

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