Road Hazards

If we are intended for great ends, we are called to great hazards.  John Henry Newman

Last week I was driving down the freeway and I looked up ahead of me and I saw all red taillights coming on.  As I slowly moved forward I was thinking about what might be up in front of us on the road.  As will often happen, I kept easing up and I glanced ahead to the other side of the freeway and there is a refrigerator on its side in the middle lane.  A Walmart truck was stopped in the middle lane too.  At first I didn’t recognize it as a refrigerator because I think the Walmart truck hit it. The door was in one part of the lane and the body of the refrigerator was on its side further down the road. 

I don’t know if you see stuff like I do on the freeway.  Maybe you don’t drive as far as I do, or maybe you don’t drive on a freeway where people pass you going 80 to 90mph like you’re sitting still. It could also be that I just drive on the roads where people lose stuff.  If you think about it, if your car is going 70mph and the wind is blowing 40mph in the same direction, your refrigerator standing up in the back of the truck is going to have a wind force of a Category 1 hurricane pushing against it.  If your fridge is standing up in the back of your truck and it meets winds with the force of a Category 1 hurricane, is it any wonder your fridge is now road kill?  

Anyway I was thinking about this incident and it reminded me of the road hazards we face every day in life. These are the unexpected events that occur when you least expect it.  We are on a journey traveling a road that will lead us somewhere.  We make choices every day about which direction we will go when the road hazards of life hit us.  How we handle our choices can mean going down the right or wrong path.

In the book “Hazardous: Committing to the Cost of Following Jesus” Derek Cooper states that “being a follower of Jesus is fraught with all kinds of challenges.  In fact, following Jesus means making regular sacrifices, taking financial and vocational risks.” The bottom line is we must trust in God to see us through the hazards of life.  He promises we will have them but we need to learn how to live through them with His help.    

   

   

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, every day I meet up with the hazards of life.  Teach me to trust in You to see me through the very obstacles that are meant to trip me and make me fall.  Through You I have all the strength I will ever need to conquer any obstacle or hazard I face.  You are my Savior, My God and I praise Your Holy Name.        

      

Scripture: Seeing the Invisible

Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18