A Farm Wife’s Analogy
Looking In The Rear View
It was wheat harvest in southeast Kansas and that afternoon when I got into town to unload my truck at the elevator, there was a problem in the office resulting in far more trucks waiting to be weighed in and out than usual. The driveway was full, the road was full, and there was at least one more semi coming behind me with another one coming from the west. Not wanting to have too many trucks blocking the road, I eased my truck into an empty parking lot across the road to wait my turn.
But when it came time to weigh my truck in, because of the position I had been in, I didn’t swing around quite far enough to get onto the scale in a totally straight manner. I didn’t realize my predicament until I had weighed in and was pulling off to unload. Watching in my side view mirror, I was almost off the scale when I realized I was going to hit the concrete ledge with the back of my trailer.
While I can do most things with the semi, I am horrible at backing. Give me a wide open field and I can back (at least like a girl), but give me a narrow scale with only a foot and a half to spare and my brain can’t seem to wrap its head around how that must be done. So I did the only thing that could be done. I threw the truck in neutral, pulled the truck brake, dashed up the steps into the office and back down the other steps out of the office to grab the driver in the next truck and ask him if he’d back it for me. He gladly did and I was out of my predicament and on my way.
As I shifted gears on my truck that day, I thought about the incident and the analogy to Christian life. The Bible says the way to Heaven is narrow.
When I looked in my side rear view that day it was plain to see I had erred and if I kept going the way I was, I would no longer be where I should be but would be pushing the edge of the concrete wall and possibly messing up my trailer.
In Christian life, there are times when the way we are traveling has changed a bit. Some days if we dare to look in our rear view mirror, we can clearly see the trajectory of our journey is no longer straight. We can see the path from whence we have come. Do we care? Can we pick out days or moments in time when we slipped? Days or moments in time where our view of something became a bit skewed? Days or moments in time when we began to question if we really had to stay in the margins our feet had been trodding?
Maybe something has happened in our lives to make it hard for us to stay on the right path like it did for me that day. We want to put the blame on someone or something and give ourselves excuses. We want to claim this is why our feet have stumbled, our path has veered. And sometimes we even want to say that God no longer requires us to stay on that narrow path and that He’s okay with how wide we have made it for ourselves.
That day when I saw how close I was to the concrete wall, I had no choice but to get help if I didn’t want to hit it.
In our spiritual life, when we see our feet are no longer set on straight paths and we see how close we are getting to the edge of the narrow way, do we hit our brakes and bale while we still can and ask for help? While we’re still on the path but just veering? Are we willing to tell someone we’re afraid we’re drifting and need their help? Will we let God get in our driver’s seat and back us up to the place where all was well, setting our feet straight again?
My pride could’ve kept me from getting help that day at the elevator but I knew I needed it. And when I need to pull the brake on my spiritual life, pushing down my pride to ask for help, I hope you will be there like that truck driver was for me that day, ready to help.
I’m ever so glad that God will be there too. He will already have the wheel, backing me up to the place I strayed. He will have just been waiting for me to ask.