March 15, 2013
I’m sure most of you have seen the video of Jeff Gordon giving the car salesman the ride of his life. It’s funny. I saw it a couple of days ago and laughed. I even shared it on a friend’s wall, but I didn’t think anything else about it. This morning, Brian sent me a PM and pointed out the spiritual lesson in that video. These are my extrapolations after thinking about it for a bit.
The guy gets in the passenger seat of the car. When we decide to serve God, we are no longer in the driver’s seat … we become the passenger. The Master Himself becomes the driver of our life.
We go seemingly too fast around curves, we face oncoming traffic, light posts and fences in our way, ramps that don’t seem to lead anywhere safe, and speeds that we are not comfortable with.
We sit, sometimes scared crazy, in the passenger seat, while The Master drives with expert precision. Avoiding the obstacles, sometimes much nearer than we would be comfortable with, flipping a perfect U-Turn at the appropriate times, and flying up the ramp without knowing what is coming.
Imagine what would have happened if the salesman (us) would have grabbed the steering wheel just ONCE thinking he could do a better job of driving the car. What a disaster would have taken place!
The poignant part of this video takes place in the last couple of seconds when the salesman finds out just who was driving the car. His immediate response was that he wanted to do it again. He FINALLY realized that the man behind the wheel really did know what he was doing. He’d probably driven that course many times in preparation for this particular journey. Nothing changed except his own trust factor, but it totally flipped everything
We MUST remember at all times that the Lover of Our Souls is behind the wheel of our lives. He has our best interest at heart. He does NOT intend to hurt or harm us. He DOES know what’s coming. He knows what’s at the top of the ramp … that there is a long straight loading dock with a nice ramp at the other end … even though we cannot see it when He moves us in the direction of a supposed ‘cliff’.
We must learn to sit back and enjoy the ride, just as that man would have enjoyed it and whooped with joy, rather than exclaiming profanities.
We are riding with the best driver in the history of history. Enjoy the ride. 😀