Devotion May 15, 2019
11/05/19 16:36
Greetings!
Last February when my daughter and I went to our annual conference which this particular year was being held in Galveston, Texas, our plane landed in Houston and our task was to then drive from the airport in Houston to our destination. The trip was about an hour. And of course my extremely competent driving daughter did the driving. In fact my extremely competent driving daughter has driven me lots of places and probably is more willing to do most of the driving than she once was after the time when we were driving back from the beach in a rented car and it was my turn to drive - we use to have an agreement to switch drivers each time we stopped somewhere in order to ‘fairly’ share the driving responsibilities.
Anyway during this particular trip the switch had happened and I was in control of the driving and my daughter decided this was a good time for her to fall asleep. She is much more trusting than I am - I am not sure I would fall asleep when I was driving - or maybe I would and then I wouldn’t see what a not so hot driver I really am. So during this stretch of driving where I was in control and my daughter was fast asleep our part of the journey had led us into a not so large city but a city big enough to have lots of lanes and lots of traffic. This particular not so large city was going through a growth spurt and was trying to redo the roads in order to accommodate the rapid increase in traffic and people.
What this meant for this particular trip was that there were lots of lane changes and detour type things and while knowing which way to go was not really an issue, the amount of traffic around me traveling at a rather rapid speed with entrance ramps coming onto the newly designed traffic patterns on various sides and at different angles provided to be quite the challenge for me and my daughter wakes up rapidly when she hears me rather loudly exclaim, “I don’t know what to do…….” Since then she has been much more proactive in the volunteering to drive on our frequent trips!
All of my kids are good drivers which I attribute to the dear man I paid to teach them to drive since I was too chicken to be in the same car with these driving learning children. And I’m not that great of a driver anyway - and then I give credit to my sainted husband who was not a chicken when my learning children were driving and would let them drive all over the place while he was sitting in the passenger seat and I was not in the car hanging on to something or grinding down the enamel on my teeth……)
This dear patient understanding man who I have wonderful fond thoughts because of his willingness to travel with driving learning children had his own driving school and he was ‘certified’ by whatever certifies you to do this insane act of teaching teenagers to drive and his 'school' counted towards that tiny little discount you receive on your car insurance since having teenage drivers in your home causes your automobile insurance to reach the outer limits of the national budget. This dear man took my teenage children and put them behind the wheel of his car and off they would go. (one child at a time since they all didn’t turn 16 at the same time and just now I had this flash of how in the world would I have survived had I had triplets and all my children turn 16 a the same time and there would have been no time to recover between learning to drive experiences!).
Now, full disclosure, is not that I didn’t think my children would become competent drivers. I had lots of faith in them to become very good drivers which they did. What the problem was the fact I was their mother…… Whenever I would sit in the passenger seat and look over at these newly learning drivers all I could see was their 4 year old selves which quickly brought to mind all those silly things that 4 year olds do and the strange decisions 4 years old make. (I would be wealthy if I had a nickel for every time I said, “What were you thinking” when they were 4 to which they always - always - said, “I don’t know”. ) Of course I had confidence that my children had somewhat matured since they were 4, but there were those moments when I wasn’t really sure…..
And every time I sat in that passenger seat and saw my 4 year old child behind the wheel of that car I would start to burst out laughing - not funny laughing but overwhelmed laughing - that same laughing I do when I am riding a roller coaster…. Not a good scenario for a teen who is trying to gain confidence behind the wheel!
Wonder what God thinks sometimes when he looks at us? Here we are as adults sent out as disciples to do the work God has given us to do. And as far as I’m concerned there really isn’t any work that is more important than the work God gives us to do.
Not that I feel overly competent to do the work God has set before me but then I figure God wouldn’t have given me this task had he not felt I could do it - or we could do it - God and I working together. But does that overly patient God look over at me sometimes and see the ‘baby Christian’ and start the same type of hysterical laughing wondering what the heck he was thinking when he called us his and sent us out as disciples…..
Probably not. Just like this mother knows her children since she was there with them every step of the way in those growing up years…. God knows us even more.
Every hair on our head, every thought, every idea, every moment…. God knows us. And God still says to each and every one of us - “I have work for you to do for me….. Let’s go do it!”
Amen!
Last February when my daughter and I went to our annual conference which this particular year was being held in Galveston, Texas, our plane landed in Houston and our task was to then drive from the airport in Houston to our destination. The trip was about an hour. And of course my extremely competent driving daughter did the driving. In fact my extremely competent driving daughter has driven me lots of places and probably is more willing to do most of the driving than she once was after the time when we were driving back from the beach in a rented car and it was my turn to drive - we use to have an agreement to switch drivers each time we stopped somewhere in order to ‘fairly’ share the driving responsibilities.
Anyway during this particular trip the switch had happened and I was in control of the driving and my daughter decided this was a good time for her to fall asleep. She is much more trusting than I am - I am not sure I would fall asleep when I was driving - or maybe I would and then I wouldn’t see what a not so hot driver I really am. So during this stretch of driving where I was in control and my daughter was fast asleep our part of the journey had led us into a not so large city but a city big enough to have lots of lanes and lots of traffic. This particular not so large city was going through a growth spurt and was trying to redo the roads in order to accommodate the rapid increase in traffic and people.
What this meant for this particular trip was that there were lots of lane changes and detour type things and while knowing which way to go was not really an issue, the amount of traffic around me traveling at a rather rapid speed with entrance ramps coming onto the newly designed traffic patterns on various sides and at different angles provided to be quite the challenge for me and my daughter wakes up rapidly when she hears me rather loudly exclaim, “I don’t know what to do…….” Since then she has been much more proactive in the volunteering to drive on our frequent trips!
All of my kids are good drivers which I attribute to the dear man I paid to teach them to drive since I was too chicken to be in the same car with these driving learning children. And I’m not that great of a driver anyway - and then I give credit to my sainted husband who was not a chicken when my learning children were driving and would let them drive all over the place while he was sitting in the passenger seat and I was not in the car hanging on to something or grinding down the enamel on my teeth……)
This dear patient understanding man who I have wonderful fond thoughts because of his willingness to travel with driving learning children had his own driving school and he was ‘certified’ by whatever certifies you to do this insane act of teaching teenagers to drive and his 'school' counted towards that tiny little discount you receive on your car insurance since having teenage drivers in your home causes your automobile insurance to reach the outer limits of the national budget. This dear man took my teenage children and put them behind the wheel of his car and off they would go. (one child at a time since they all didn’t turn 16 at the same time and just now I had this flash of how in the world would I have survived had I had triplets and all my children turn 16 a the same time and there would have been no time to recover between learning to drive experiences!).
Now, full disclosure, is not that I didn’t think my children would become competent drivers. I had lots of faith in them to become very good drivers which they did. What the problem was the fact I was their mother…… Whenever I would sit in the passenger seat and look over at these newly learning drivers all I could see was their 4 year old selves which quickly brought to mind all those silly things that 4 year olds do and the strange decisions 4 years old make. (I would be wealthy if I had a nickel for every time I said, “What were you thinking” when they were 4 to which they always - always - said, “I don’t know”. ) Of course I had confidence that my children had somewhat matured since they were 4, but there were those moments when I wasn’t really sure…..
And every time I sat in that passenger seat and saw my 4 year old child behind the wheel of that car I would start to burst out laughing - not funny laughing but overwhelmed laughing - that same laughing I do when I am riding a roller coaster…. Not a good scenario for a teen who is trying to gain confidence behind the wheel!
Wonder what God thinks sometimes when he looks at us? Here we are as adults sent out as disciples to do the work God has given us to do. And as far as I’m concerned there really isn’t any work that is more important than the work God gives us to do.
Not that I feel overly competent to do the work God has set before me but then I figure God wouldn’t have given me this task had he not felt I could do it - or we could do it - God and I working together. But does that overly patient God look over at me sometimes and see the ‘baby Christian’ and start the same type of hysterical laughing wondering what the heck he was thinking when he called us his and sent us out as disciples…..
Probably not. Just like this mother knows her children since she was there with them every step of the way in those growing up years…. God knows us even more.
Every hair on our head, every thought, every idea, every moment…. God knows us. And God still says to each and every one of us - “I have work for you to do for me….. Let’s go do it!”
Amen!