I remember once zipping down the highway: What a drive! As I drove I noticed tire marks that crisscrossed the road. “Burst tires!” I realized. Tires of motorists who had not checked their air pressure before venturing onto the highway. I noticed that these tire markings veered onto the barricades on the side and spoke very clearly of major accidents in which driver and passenger had lost either limb or life. Tragedies which could have been averted, if motorist had checked the condition of the tire and air pressure before starting on his journey!
Aren’t we all, quite often, doing the same?
We travel down the road of life with bodies that are being misused. Tanking ourselves with liquor or drugs instead of exercise! Puffing at our cigarette instead of building muscle! Reading and seeing pornography and thrash instead of filling our minds with spiritual thoughts that sustain.
And with such worn out, under pressure, badly maintained bodies and minds we trundle onto the road of life and suddenly find ourselves lying maimed and mutilated with no one really interested in picking us up. “Let him lie there,” they say and turn away.
“Can you pass me my glares?” I asked my wife as I drove. She wiped them and gave it to me. She knew as I did that even if I took my eyes off the road for a split second at the speed we were going, it would be a disaster for all of us. And yet how often on the road of life, we take our eyes away from the path we are traversing. Instead of looking down and avoiding potholes, bad patches, rocks and stones, we look elsewhere and sooner or later find we are stuck in unnecessary situations.
We should not lose focus.
How easily we get distracted. How easily the pleasures of life, seductive skirts, handsome men, make us look away from the road ahead and we end up another fallen victim on the road of life.
It was then I made my first mistake. I did see the road sign, but thinking I knew the route and with an arrogance born of stupid pride, I drove past and entered the wrong road that took me to places I had no intention of visiting. The road sign had been clear, but foolish me, thought I knew better.
In life we see these signs and don’t bother to look. Signs that tell us how to live. Rules that God has given us to follow, but with a ‘I know it all attitude,’ we ignore these spiritual laws and drive on the road of life at full speed, to reach some place we had no plan to reach.
I reversed the car, grinned sheepishly at my family and got back onto the right road again. ‘Thank God,’ I said to myself, ‘we are allowed second chances..!
