Reactionary Brake-Slamming

I was just remembering this morning a simple reality that the Lord made real to me many years ago when I was running my car through a commercial car wash. As the water was spraying and the big brushes were moving up and down the sides of the car, my reflex reaction was to hit the brakes even though I had the car in "park" mode and it wasn't going anywhere. The combination of diminished vision and machine parts moving outside of the vehicle gave me the sensation that the car was moving...

I learned that to keep from feeling like hitting the brakes, I should look for a reference point, something unmoving, in the wash bay and simply fix my eyes on that. That day I saw a spot on the wall where some paint had chipped off and I kept my eyes on that spot. Now I could relax and enjoy the car wash without a sense of disorientation and without the urge to slam on my car brakes!

Being part of the technology age, we are all caught up in the disorientation caused in part by the break-neck pace of life coupled with an increase of human brokenness and the proliferation of countless opposing opinions and negative emotions that fill the atmosphere through the internet. We as Jesus' followers will resort to fearful reactionary "brake-slamming" in our journey with God because of our desire to keep a sense of stability unless there is a reference point that we are fixed on continually. Jesus is that reference point, the one unmoving reality in our life when all else is moving and changing around us.

I believe He wants us to be able to relax in the midst of the ever moving elements of this age, but we won't be able to if we are constantly "slamming on the brakes" (grasping for control of life) in order to feel secure. He alone is that place of stability and unchanging reality that the human soul longs for. May we find Him to be this reference point (both as individuals and as a people of God)...

Eugene Peterson in The Message paraphrases Hebrews 12:2,3 like this: "Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed - that exhilarating finish in and with God - he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever...When you find yourself flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!"