December 21, 2011

Paparazzi

Within in a span of one week I had to travel to Denver for two separate meetings. On the first trip it was dusk when I pulled up behind a vehicle at a stop light and a flash went off. I knew it had to be Denver’s street traffic control camera and I, along with the driver in front of me, immediately started looking at the cars around us wondering who the guilty party might be. I didn’t feel I’d broken the law, and yet I kept replaying the situation in my mind fearing that I would be getting a traffic ticket in the mail. On my second trip I watched for overhead cameras like a hawk and I was on my best behavior. However as I was driving on an arterial and keeping up with the flow of traffic we crested a slight rise in the road and there was another flash…this time coming from a van parked on the side of the road. Looking at my speedometer I was a couple miles an hour over the speed limit, but again I couldn’t tell if the camera was taking my photo, or the photo of the cars around me. I couldn’t wait to get out of Denver, because now I was concentrating more on cameras that I was on pedestrians. I was at the last stoplight going out of town when, you guessed it, there was yet another flash. Although paranoia had set in, this time I knew for a fact that I had done nothing wrong. There are times in my life when the Lord sends me a flash right at the moment of sinning which gives me the opportunity to repent and move forward…however, that doesn’t mean that in a week or so I won’t also get a reminder of my sin.

1 comment:

Steve Corey said...

Gail;

-----I’m glad it is not this easy. “Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says 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 55:6-9) When I read the Bible I am struck by how little I know. When I look within myself I am struck the same. When things happen between people there are so many different angles to consider. Sometimes there seems to be no angle from where what might have been right can be seen. Always what can be fully known about the situation by which it could be determined is not available. It is not even available when I am a party within a situation. The details of the heart and mind of my other person involved quickly disappear into the unknown. The details of who I am that were active within the situation disappear almost as quickly. How often are we left feeling, “Why did I do that?” And it is almost always we are left feeling, “Why did they do that?” We live in the unknown more than we do in the known. Like deep inside a system of caverns, we have no sense of where the way out is discerned from the way in. But like candles at important positions God wrote for us some of His thoughts.
-----Still we must put together what He meant by those carefully placed thoughts. And we can only do that by using what we have learned. The fact we haven’t learned everything about either the cavern or His Word is one flash of warning. The fact we can not even peer into ourselves with complete understanding is another flash of warning. Desires and spites shade every meaning we try to draw until we should wonder if maybe God's Word discovers us more than we figure out His Word. We envision who God might be and what He might require, but we must realize the great lack of detail to which we can do that. So we must be ok with adequate because that is all the ability God has given us to know. Like Paul said, we see now dimly as through a mirror.
-----So I wonder about myself, if I would be strong enough to obey Him more than I do now should He show me more clearly right from wrong. I am thankful that knowledge grows with time. Then if I have any certainty about anything in my mind now it is forbear and forgive. I need these as much as I must do them.



Love you all,
Steve Corey