Sweetwater Presbyterian

Small in size, Large in Faith and Love

Devotion

Greetings!
There are several major purchases many of us make in our life.  Usually these major purchases take the form of houses and cars (altho my student loans fall into this category of major purchases since they  are more than cars and close to houses and this major purchase will follow me the rest of  the days of my life - notice the Soap Opera reference…..)
Major purchases take major thought and major consideration and major commitment and in many cases a major stepping out in faith.  I remember the time when we moved to a new area and went to buy a house and our loan giver required me to get my boss to sign a piece of paper saying I was employed and we bought the house and the next week our whole office got laid off - boy was that a moment of faith (and of course because God is so good all worked out).
The most recent major purchase we have made is my car.  I lived for umpteen years in WV where it snows at the drop of a hat and the roads are often covered (I will never forget one winter when I taught an evening Bible Study an hour from my house and every single week, the night of the Bible Study, it snowed and driving back go my home was a slow challenging crawl because I, even though I lived in WV and knew better, had never thought to get a car with All Wheel Drive to help me drive in the snow!
So, I finally get a car that is All Wheel Drive!  Score!  Of course since the time when I bought the All Wheel Drive I can count on one hand how many times it has snowed and I have needed the All Wheel Drive. 
But the wonder of this All Wheel Drive is the fact that it is loaded with all these automatic devices.  Now I would have never thought to request all of these ‘smart’ features of this car but it was used and it came with what it had.  While it is amazing to me all of the attributes of this car, there was a great learning curve coming from the stripped down model of car I had previously!
My car now has all these lane changing warning systems.  If there is a car in my blind spot on either side of me these little lights will be on which tell me these vehicles are there and if I have my blinker on and I try to go that direction warning beeps will let me know that I should not be trying to go into that lane.  Wow!  What a great help.  No more having to turn around to look in the lane beside of you and thus taking your eyes off the cars in front of you in order to change lanes.  But I will tell you it took me a while to get use to this.  After how many years of driving - (It is about 50 years and it hurts to say that….) and having to look over my shoulder to see if there was a car there and now not having to - what a major change.  Hard to quit those reactions that are almost automatic after all these years.
Then there is the even more amazing back up camera.  No more trying to turn around and drive backwards while contorting your body to be able to see what is behind you.  You simply look at the screen on your dashboard which comes complete with colored lines that tell you how close you are to the obstacles behind you and then if you get way too close to what is behind you a beeper goes off.  There is literally no excuse to run in to anything behind you!
But it was really hard to be able to do this when I first got the car.  Learning to depend on this camera and these lines and even the beepers.  My daughter has a really long driveway and one time when I was at her house I drove backwards up and down the driveway to practice using the screen to back up!  
And I think I finally have it!
But I tell you all these modern safety conveniences on this car (and there are more) really tested my ability to trust the safety conveniences over the way I had done things for almost 50 years!
And is that not true with God.  God says trust me and we see the evidences of how trusting God really does make a difference in our life, but we have a hard time giving up that control and not doing things the way we have always done them relying on ourselves rather than trusting a God who we know is all knowing and all powerful.  
Even though we know the promises, have seen the evidence, it is so hard to trust our loving and caring God.  But I think it is like the afternoon I spent driving backwards up and down my daughters driveway, we have to start and we have to ‘practice’ trusting God until we finally realize that relying on God really can make for a better life.

Amen!