Driving

We’ve done quite a bit of driving together recently.  Fun outings and day trips around Wisconsin and northern Illinois and a long-distance visit to extended family in Missouri made for lots of time together in the car.  We do car travel well and enjoy it!

The extra windshield time got me thinking about a driving “incident” I had some years ago.  It relates to the Apostle Paul’s encounter with Jesus Christ and the positive life change that followed…

I was driving on a two-lane country road one winter morning and hit an unseen patch of black ice.  Instantly, the car was out of control and spinning like the laws of physics had been suspended.  As it was happening, I expected the car to go off the road into a ditch and a major wreck.  It didn’t though.  I ended up perfectly in the other lane, but going in the opposite direction.  I’d done an unplanned 180!

Before meeting Jesus of Nazareth, Paul (then Saul) was much opposed to anyone who believed and followed Jesus.  He thought them to be misguided about God and dangerous to his culture and society. He even presided over the murder of one Christ-follower (Stephen) and had others dragged from their homes and jailed.  Simply put, Jesus did not fit into Paul’s view of the world, nor the life he had carefully and excellently constructed and achieved for himself.  We can be like Paul, too.

Later, Paul would write that knowing Jesus Christ and following him as Lord and Savior was surpassingly greater than any other experience or achievement in his life to that point or that he could have in the future.  Nothing was greater or even compared.

Paul did a 180 on Jesus and kept going that new direction with new motivation- gratitude for God’s love and grace uniquely found in Jesus! Let’s do similarly with our lives, in our spheres of influence!