Recently I was caught in bumper to bumper, stop n’ go traffic on I-70
for over 40 minutes. My irritation level climbed as some drivers snuck around
the pack by driving on the left shoulder of the road. I found myself snuggled
up to the car in front of me just to keep other drivers from forcing their way
in as they jockeyed for position. Eventually the logjam cleared and my attitude
improved. An hour later I came upon an accident that required traffic to merge
into one lane and I willingly held back so the semi-tractor trailer next to me
could move in front of me. He smiled and waved a thank you and it felt really
nice to have done a simple courtesy. I pondered the difference in my reactions
between having a choice to let someone merge and being forced to let someone
merge.
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Our God directs us to love our neighbors, love our enemies, and love our God. That pretty much covers it. He is sure to inform us that love is not just a fluffy feeling of fancy frills sewn onto satin thoughts about some object of affection. Love is action where its thought encounters the physical, but it is the cause of such thought when it can not encounter the physical. Love is both beneficial action and the reasoning behind its own call. Where love is exclusive and systemic, like it must be in Heaven, everything done would feel really nice because everything done would be really proper. Even so little as inconsideration would not exist.
-----We‘ve been called by God‘s Word to love that way even where not everything done is proper, where most things are even improper and many are more substantively improper than mere inconsideration. And yet the impropriety of any situation can no more deny love’s propriety than can the misbehavior of the situations‘ causer. The situation’s causer falls within the category of everyone, and the situation is generally wherein he will be found. “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” (Gal 6:10)
-----The only really difficult aspect that we should have about loving is that of propriety. It takes knowledge to understand what is proper in a situation. We rarely have full knowledge about anything happening around us. Therefore, we rarely have full certainty about what is the proper good to do in a situation, although the certainty we usually have before an assumption must be made is generally enough.
-----So you actually knew next to nothing about those people driving the left shoulder. Probably the most accurate assumption was of their actions being from plain old self-gratuity. But your only certainty is that you could only make that assumption. Which of them may have had desperately real circumstance for being there is not at all specifically known. They, too, would’ve become the trucker at the accident. So, you’re left knowing only that someone must merge into your lane and risking the impropriety of thinking the worst about the circumstances of their need, however small that risk might be.
-----Call me Mr. Mel O. Drama; I like to think in dichotomies. Our behavior is either loving, or hateful (hateful being awarded the realm of unconcern.) The driver on the left shoulder is either a neighbor in emergency or an enemy usurping position. But all the same he is in need of concern for his situation and deserving a yield since you lack the intimate knowledge of which he might be. Had your actual knowledge been of his gratuitous selfishness, his real need might have been for a little rethinking time while grid-locked on the shoulder such that letting him in would have been the action of unconcern. Goodness! Is love risky, or what?! That is why I love Galatians 6:10 so much. All we can do for certain is simple good. God works the systemics from there
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment