Give God The Keys And Enjoy The Ride

by Kevin Burton

   Just thinking, what if we treated our journey through life to Heaven as we do an earthly road trip?

   Why exactly is it that we don’t?

   I wrote Friday about a recent road trip my wife and I made and how very much we enjoyed it (Road Trip! An Old-World Pleasure, Aug. 14).

   Sometimes on a road trip even the mundane things are fun, almost exciting, just because they are part of a road trip.

   Are we not doing the same thing on our way to a Heavenly home?  But I don’t treat it like that.  The mundane things of life are not exciting and sometimes stiflingly un-fun.

   I obviously have gotten this concept into my head because I am writing about it. So how is it that it doesn’t stick to me and emerge glowing from my every action and utterance?

   One of the many book ideas I will likely never complete is an I-70 road trip. That interstate highway runs from near Cove Fort, Utah in the west to Baltimore in the east.

   The idea is to start on one end, travel until something looks interesting then stop.  I would get to know some of the people, places and things, maybe work some temp jobs here and there.  I would move on when the time felt right.  Maybe take 6-8 months to travel the whole highway, then go home and finish the writing. 

   I picked I-70 because I was a child of divorce with my mother moving to Kansas and my father staying in Ohio.  To get back and forth we traversed I-70. At least those sections of the highway are very familiar to me.

   It would have been a fun project. If someone else writes such a book I will certainly read it. I can’t imagine attempting to write it now though, with the country derailed. 

   One essential difference between a road trip to Heaven and a road trip to Baltimore is, or certainly should be, is who is doing the driving.

   (There is a Baltimore joke in here somewhere but I will let it pass.)

   Unlike in the book idea we don’t know the entire life route for sure.  So it changes from being my route to God’s route.   

   God as the driver. That’s the key. It’s also probably the answer to the question of why everyday life doesn’t have that road trip feeling.  It’s difficult to hand over the keys.

   Insisting on driving makes no sense because God knows where all the metaphorical potholes are, the road construction.  He knows the best places to stop and the places to avoid at all costs. 

   God never runs out of gas or gets lost.

   For whatever percentage of life’s trip I insist on taking the wheel, I forfeit all those benefits, for what? 

   Solomon, writing in Proverbs 3 says in effect, “give God the keys.”

   ^“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones (Prov. 3:5-8 KJV).

   “As humans, we function best when we let God be in the driving seat,” writes Dean Courtier on sermoncentral.com. “Maybe our pride does not like it, but we need to be led and directed in life by having a close connection with our Lord.”

   Here’s a reminder of an obvious truth from the book of Isaiah.

   “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55: 8-9 KJV).

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