I'm not one of those maniacs who goes blazing down a 30 mph street at 70+mph...but I'm probably going about 37 or so. And if there IS someone going 30 mph, I get all annoyed at their legal morality, and I sternly say "MOVE!" in a frustrated tone that no one can hear because I'm generally in the car by myself, and of course the driver in question can't hear me because there's my car and air and their car separating them from my frustrated voice.
When I would drive back to St. Louis from Kentucky in the not-so-distant undergraduate years, the speed limit would decline as you passed from state to state. And it DROVE
ME
CRAZY.
I'd start out in a 70mph zone driving through Kentucky (naturally driving 77 mph), slow down to 50mph in Louisville (fine, it's a city, no worries...in fact, the traffic generally freaked me out and I'd actually go LESS than the speed limit for fear of getting run over by a merging semi). And then in Indiana the speed limit hopped back up to 70, and I'd resume my happy 77mph, setting the cruise control to reflect this very efficient-feeling but not-TOO-illegal speed.
And then would come Illinois...where the interstate speed limit is only 65. And I would just keep speeding along at 77mph...after all, my cruise control's already set, and everything's been fine driving this speed so far. What's the big difference between Indiana and Illinois highways that causes 70mph to suddenly become more dangerous than it was before the invisible state line? If anything, Illinois is flatter (more flat?), implying that Indiana just doesn't care for its drivers' safety like Illinois does, I suppose.
And after Illinois would come the glorious moment when I not only entered Missouri, but St. Louis itself, the city where I grew up and the point in the trip that I always classified as being "home", even if I still had a good 40 minutes or so ahead of me before I actually reached my driveway.
And here is where things would get really frustrating.
Not only would the speed limit suddenly become 60mph (remember, I'm still cruising along at 77), but I would inevitably hit rush hour traffic that would FURTHER slow me down, until finally I maneuvered my way around standstill traffic and looping interchanges and came to where I-44 meets MO-109, the intersection where my high school happily and predictably stands, and where I'm less than 20 minutes from home.
But by this point I've been driving for over 6 hours. 20 more minutes isn't going to cut it.
If you've ever driven the stretch of Hwy 109 between I-44 and Hwy 100, you know that it's a rather twisty and turn-y road, going up over a mountain-ish hill and back down again, and having just enough random turn-offs for people to suddenly come out of nowhere, or stop to turn and catch every car behind them off guard causing a domino effect of brake lights. So it's no wonder that the speed limit is 45 mph. It's probably a very good idea to be going that slow, just in case Nelly is pulling out of his driveway (because Nelly totally lives off this very road). You don't want to try to explain to the performer of "Shake Your Tail Feather" why his tail light was unfortunately crushed by your front fender.
...But I drove this stretch of road twice a day, every day, for 4 years. I know the twists and turns. And 45 mph after a 6 hour drive isn't going to cut it.
So suddenly, I'm that crazy person trying to drive 60mph+ on a two-lane road, getting mad at all the people who dare drive 45 mph and obey the law. Silly good citizens. Just go recycle or something.
It seems like most people drive like this. The speed limit signs become more of a suggestion than an actual law, and it usually feels safer to drive over the speed limit and keep moving at the speed of traffic than obey the number on the sign and risk getting rear ended by some crazy driver who's been on the road for almost 7 hours and can't take it anymore.
But stop and consider for a second...
...maybe all those people driving the speed limit have got it right.
Do you ever feel like maybe the rest of your life needs a speed limit? Some sort of definitive, easily measured limit that tells you when you're reaching your breaking point and entering the danger zone? Some number on a scale that tells you that you're getting in over your head, that you're probably going to smack into someone else and negatively impact both their life and yours if you don't just slow down? I think that my life does...although, with my driving habits, I'm not sure I'd listen to it.
I'm one of those people who pride themselves on being busy. Senior year of college, my typical schedule would involve leaving my dorm room at 9:00 in the morning and returning to it somewhere around 10:30 or 11:00 at night, because even though my campus was all of 2 blocks, it just didn't seem time-efficient to go back to my room with everything else I had going on. I'd go from class to class to lunch to class to work to choir to the library to some club to dinner to some other club, and finally end up back in the room where I might start my homework around 11:00 or so and still manage to be in bed by 1:00am, sleep until 8:00, and start the whole thing over the next day. And I liked being busy, and I got to see basically all my friends in the course of a day, and things were going great.
And then one day I had a breakdown.
I don't really remember what triggered it...some indiscriminate amount of homework probably. I just remember sitting in Front Lobby with a Francophone African novel in my lap, staring at the floor, and various friends walking by and asking with alarm if I was okay, and subsequently bursting into tears and being hugged by my friend Amanda while my friend Erika ran off to buy me an ice cream smoothie and then worked my life down into a slightly more manageable (if still fairly overwhelming) to-do list. Later I remember my friends Matt and Brandon came by, and (being of the male persuasion) both just sort of looked at me with confusion mingled with concern, and offered to find other people to fulfill the various extra-curricular obligations I had to both of them - which, at that point, seemed as good as handing me a check for a million dollars and a plane ticket to Paris.
I'd crossed the speed limit.
And I thought everything was fine until I crashed.
The thing I always liked about being busy was the feeling of having things in control, having a purpose, and (as narcissistic as it is) feeling important. And individually, I liked every activity that I was involved in. These are all emotions that should make you feel good, right?
So what's with the breakdown?
Maybe it's because things aren't supposed to be in our control. Maybe things aren't supposed to be all about me.
I remember watching this video by Rob Bell a few years ago called "Noise." It's all about how people get all angry and complain about God being inactive, or not giving us any help or direction for our lives...when really, our lives are just too noisy to hear Him. We're not listening. We're too busy speeding.
Do you think it's possible that we get so caught up in our own plans for our lives, with our own destination, with our own timelines, that we forget that God has something else in mind? Do you think that we'll see the road signs pointing to where we need to go, pointing to the right direction, if we're driving at 100 miles per hour? Does it make more sense to drive through life as fast as you can and have to make a U-turn every block or so because you've passed your turn, or drive the speed limit, paying careful attention to the directions, and orienting our lives around the journey to our destination, not worrying how long it will take us to get there?
I've found that whenever I get really stressed, really upset, or really overwhelmed by life in general, it's because I've gotten too busy for God. I've started going too fast. And sometimes I can have the best intentions ("Oh, I don't have time to read the Bible today, I have to read these 50 pages on church history for my ____ class", etc)...they're still horrible excuses.
In church this morning, the pastor talked about how the Enlightenment has made us all into a whole bunch of individualist thinkers, who believe that everything's all about ME, to please ME, to make MY life easier. We shout "That's not FAIR!" and "You can't do that to ME!" But it's all pointless, because it's so not about us. Like the pastor also pointed out, the Bible compares humanity to the dew that is on the grass in the morning and is gone...in the morning. We don't even get a whole day in the relative span of eternity.
In one of the first sessions of my New Testament class, I remember my professor exclaimed halfway through the lecture, "Have you ever stopped and thought that the Bible wasn't written about your life?" And the class generally laughed...but really. The Bible isn't about us. It isn't some ancient self-help manual (even though it CAN be helpful and relevant to modern life). The whole world, all of creation isn't about us. It's about God. God existed, God decided for there to be a world, God decided to put people in the world, and God furthermore decided to save all those people when they went and messed up God's world. And one day God's kingdom will be established and all the people will worship God forever.
Seems like it's about God, doesn't it?
Kind like how roads are intended for all people to get to wherever they're going, not just for you to get where you're going.
When we speed through life, we run the perpetual risk of missing what God wants to say to us. No matter how loud someone is shouting on the side of the road, the passenger of a car going 70mph won't be able to understand what they're saying. Why should our lives be any different when it comes to hearing God's voice?
And even if God is in the car with you, you won't be able to hear his directions if you have the radio blasting out the speakers.
It's about listening. Listening to directions, listening to authority, listening to the speed limits that were placed there for a reason. Listening for God's voice in a world that is increasingly trying to push him out, turning up the music to drown out the sound of His voice.
It's about recognizing that life has a speed limit.
Then again, maybe the best thing to do is to just let God drive...
This reminds me of "Jesus take the wheel" by Carrie Underwood.
ReplyDeleteHaha, yeah I thought of that after I posted it.
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