Posted tagged ‘driving’

« Words from WW Blog home page

Practicing The Presence of Christ…Behind The Steering Wheel

May 14, 2025

“And teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

I wouldn’t characterize myself as being a “road rager,” but perturbed and annoyed would fit me as comfortably as my twenty-five-year-old Michigan State sweatshirt, complete with holes in the armpits.

I hurl flaming insults at drivers and motorcyclists who dart in and out of traffic, elderly great-grandmothers who creep along like they’re looking at Christmas light displays, teens focused on their cellphones more than the road (Against the law in Colorado now, thank God!), and sunglassed adorned professionals driving BMW’s in entitled kinds of ways.

It hit me this week that I am negligent, downright clueless, about practicing the presence of Christ when I’m driving. I’m like Peter drawing his sword to cut off the ear of Malchus as Jesus is being arrested. The rough edges of my life surface when a steering wheel is in front of me. It’s easy to pray for a wayward soul to find the Way, the Truth, and the Life. On the other hand, it’s revealing of my personality and character flaws when I reduce the annonymous guy who just cut me off to being a moron.

Why can’t my first thought be to pray for the person, to pray that whatever is going on in his life that is filled with darkness could be spoken to by the whisper of God? Why is my first thought more along the lines of casting him…verbally…into the lake of fire?

Is practicing the presence of Christ while driving my Civic possible, or is it more like an episode of “The Twilight Zone”?

It seems like when a person has things going well and is feeling pretty good about his relationshiop with Jesus that there’s a nudging from the Holy Spirit about some wart that I don’t habve tried to not see. Notice I switched from a person to “I” as that sentence progressed.

I think I need to put a sticky note on my dash that says something like, “Don’t Cuss At Them! Pray For Them!” Or “An Erratic Driver May be a Sign of An Unsettled Life. Pray For Their Peace.” At other times I need a poster board glaring at me with the word “Repent, Bill!” written in glow-in-the-dark letters.

This is an experience that will be properly defined as being “still in progress.” As I climb behind the wheel, I need to remind myself to pray for the road miles ahead. Sometimes, I pray for safety, but I have not considered praying for others.

Of course, the question might be, “Does it matter?” If no one hears me muttering Baptist profanity, what difference does it make? The answer is more about seeking the mind of Christ and realizing that no matter where I am or what I’m doing, I’m reflecting Him, reflecting just how intimate my relationship with Him is. Triple A estimates that the average person in the U.S. spends 55-60 minutes a day in an automobile. That’s roughly 300 hours a year.

I can choose to be a negative ninny for 300 hours a year or practice the presence of Christ, even if it in interstate gridlock.

PRAYER: Lord, I’ll try. I really will. In those moments when I revert to Peter with a sword ready to inflict pain and abuse, please forgive me. May You be my Driving Force!

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Please Be Patient! Student Driver.

May 29, 2024

Around our area, several vehicles have been driving down the road or stopped at red lights with bumper stickers that inform others that a high school kid is behind the wheel. A few cars have stickers attached to the back, to each side, and on the front hood. THOSE cars really make you keep your distance!

I can understand the caution. People in our area drive like entitled maniacs, zooming from one lane to a spot two lanes over like they’re navigating the sales racks at Nordstrom’s. Whatever driver’s training class they took has been long forgotten, or they flunked the course. It’s fascinating to watch someone who has been speeding down the road have his excessive progress interrupted by getting behind one of the student drivers’ cars. As they say, patience is a virtue, but when someone is implored to be patient there is a tightening of the jaw muscles and white-knuckling happening on the steering wheel.

Most of us believe in extending grace as long as we’re not involved in the extending. Let the pimply-faced kid be in someone else’s lane. He needs the experience, but let him get it in while he’s in someone else’s way.

Yesterday, Carol and I took the three oldest grandkids to a water park north of Denver. On the way home, three motorcycles weaved through the highway traffic, going over a hundred miles an hour. A few miles later, three vehicles did the same. Our sixteen-year-old grandson was in the car. In three weeks he takes his driver’s license test. He’s been the kid in the car with the Student Driver signs for several months. I was thankful he wasn’t behind the steering wheel as the Evil Knievels came zipping by.

Grace isn’t just the willingness to extend forgiveness. It’s also understanding that we’re all in some type of “unpreparedness”, and seeing that other person, whether it be an apprentice, a student driver, a rookie, a less-talented all-thumbs clumsy doofus, or a slower-than-molasses senior with patient eyes and an understanding attitude.

In a time when entitlement is discussed in various circles—seemingly always in reference to someone other than ourselves—the graceless attitude we sometimes possess is another warped form of the “e word.” Our huffing and puffing about the situations and people in our lives that mess up our schedule or slow our speed demon agenda has the fingerprints of entitlement upon it.

Think about the sweating palms of that teenage driver, the uncertainty of the road decisions she has to make, and her striving for perfection on every careful turn at a street corner. Give her some grace. Maybe say a brief prayer for her with your eyes open.

Maybe pray for the parents while you’re at it. “Lord, prepare them for that first car insurance premium billing they’re going to receive!”

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Suggested Stop Signs

July 24, 2017

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                                 July 24, 2017

                                   

I’ve noticed it more and more…like a bad body rash that keeps spreading! It’s called “The Suggested Stop”!

A “suggested stop” happens when a driver approaches a stop sign and slows and goes! There is not a stop in the process, because…it is only a “suggested stop.”

Stop signs have not changed with the times. They are as old-fashioned as they’ve always been. No modernization, or fancy new lettering. Not even a more up-to-date word or saying like “Easy” or “Have a nice day!” Not even an image like a smiley face! Just the same old four lettered word with a flaming red background as always.

STOP!

What has gotten lost in the Master Drive instruction somewhere is that STOP usually has a reason attached to it, like some possible negative repercussions if someone decides not to stop.

I noticed it this past year at a four-way stop close to the middle school a half mile from our house. At 7:15 in the morning it is a busy intersection. The crossing guard, a sweet lady that I’ve known for years, has considered wrapping herself in bubble wrap and developing waistline bumpers as she escorts students across the street with her STOP sign raised high for people to see. And yet she has very few days where she doesn’t have to deal with drivers from the “suggested stop” school of thought!

This morning as I headed towards my first cup of coffee at Starbucks I came to another four-way stop. As I slowed a BMW on the right approached the STOP sign, reduced his speed from 30 to 25, and then turned left in front of me while holding a cigarette out the window and sporting NASCAR sunglasses.

I’ve thought a lot about suggested stoppers and have decided that the whole idea fits with our culture of entitlement. People feel entitled to drive the way they want, to not take road signs literally. Kind of like those stone tablets that Moses carried down! You know the ones I’m talking about…The Ten Suggestions!

We simply live in a world where it is to your advantage…more than that, for your well-being and health…to follow the instructions and obey the signs. We seem to do that only when it’s convenient, like when the gas gauge has a red “E” on it. Very few of us see that and say to ourselves, “Oh, that’s just a suggestion to stop at a gas station and get some fuel!” Those who believe such logic are called “walkers” and “hitchhikers”!

With all the sophisticated new car technology perhaps the auto industry could put in some kind of automatic stopping device that reacts when the vehicle approaches a STOP sign. If a car can now be parked without the driver having his hands on the steering wheel surely an automatic stop technology can be invented for new cars!

Of course, if that happens the 1982 Chevette will blow right past you!

Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Freedom, Humor, Parenting, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Poking Along At 79 MPH

February 20, 2017

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                               February 20, 2017

                                  

Carol and I were driving on I-25 Saturday morning heading to Greeley, Colorado, a small city about an hour north of the Mile High City. I was speeding at 79, but it felt like I was a covered wagon at Daytona. Cars zipped past us like we were sitting still.

I realized, that at 79 miles per hour, I was now my dad! He would have been doing 70 in a 75 speed zone, but the speed of pokey people has now been raised to anything under 80! Call it the evolution of driving! Some of the cars that lead me in the dust should have NASCAR numbers on the side panels!

A motorcyclist shoots by us on the right like a fireworks rocket launch. A pick-up truck with tires as tall as I am thunders by…obviously on his way to the monster truck show. In my rearview mirror I see a BMW bearing down on me quickly…and then threading the needle between the car in the lane on my left and my left front bumper.

Is it the white Honda Accord that gives me away? Do people now see that car and think AARP? Should interstates have one lane labeled “Safe Drivers’ Lane?” Or perhaps a toll lane for those who want to go over 80…with rubber bumper railings on each side, like a bumper bowling lane!

Our driving habits and fights at early morning Black Friday sales are two indicators of a cultural affliction. Most of us live by the theme “It’s all about me!” Who cares about the mom with three pre-schoolers trying to navigate the highway and parent crying babies at the same time? Who cares about the senior citizen whose reflexes are now a little slower who has the impatient over-caffeinated twenty-five year old riding his bumper?

Our highways reflect how we live our lives…out-of-control, living for the moment, thoughtless, risky, entitled, and ready for the excuses to sputter to the Highway Patrol officer.

 

Categories: children, Community, Death, Freedom, Humor, Parenting, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Driving Miss Reagan

May 13, 2014

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                          May 13, 2014

 

                                         “Driving Miss Reagan”

 

It started as soon as I entered the house through her front door.

“Granddad, I’m having waffles for breakfast.” (I won’t pepper my writing with her pronunciation, but breakfast comes from her lips sounding like “bweckfust.”)

I had volunteered for this chauffeuring duty, filling in for Miss Reagan’s dad, also my son-in-law, who was working out of town for a few days. Driving my three year old granddaughter around for a few minutes each morning sounded great.

For a three year old, Reagan can talk more than a stumping politician. Her “l’s” and “r’s” still sound like “w’s”. Last week when I showed her a scratch on my arm she asked, “Did it bweed?”

Without her older brother to share chat time with she is all out…constant…dizzying chatter!

“Granddad, would you cawwy my waffle…and be very careful, because if the wind gets it I will not be happy!”

     “Yes ma’am!”

      The twelve minute car ride to her other grandmother’s house has more topics of conversation than Time magazine has articles each issue.

“Granddad, do you like fire twucks?” 

      “Sure…it’s good to have a fire truck when there is a fire that is burning.”

      “I was in a fire when we stayed at a hotel.”

       “Oh…really!”

      “It was scawy!”

       “I can imagine!”

       “I wike wooking out windows. Do you wike wooking out windows?”

       “Yes. Windows are good.”

       “Does Grammy like windows?”

       “I suppose. We haven’t really had much conversation about it.”

      From behind my driver’s seat I can hear her taking a long sip of apple juice from her sippy cup, ending with a faint “ahhh” sound of satisfaction.

“Granddad, there’s a Chick-fil-A!”

      “Yes, there it is! Maybe we’ll go there for dinner this week. I think I’ll get a chicken salad.”

      “Noooooo….not chicken sawad! You’re siwwy, Granddad!”

      “Why is chicken salad silly?”

      “You have to get chicken strwips!”

      “Is that what you get?”
“Yes, with honey barbecue sauce and waffle fwies!”

      “Oh…okay!”

      “Do you like to dweam, Granddad?”

      “Sure…I guess I do. You mean when I’m sweeping…I mean, sleeping?”
“Yes, I dweam about Puggles and wearing new shoes and cotton candy.”

      “Oh…that’s nice. Are all those in the same dream?”

      “Noooooo…….Granddad, don’t be siwwy!”

      Being silly is a necessary element of a grandfather’s conversation with his three year old backseat passenger. The journey ends and Miss Reagan dances an original step in front of me to her “Nana” Hodges’ house.

I ring the doorbell and she bangs on the door. Nana greets her and Reagan is ready for the next conversation.

Granddad gets back in the car and leaves younger than I was fifteen minutes before!

Categories: children, Humor, love, Parenting, Story, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

The Emerging Rude Factor

October 24, 2012

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                                October 24, 2012

 

I was driving in the downtown area today with my youngest daughter and witnessed a determined lady turning on to the street we were on and disregarding a woman and her pre-schooler crossing the street. She sped on to pursue her daily agenda items, leaving an angry mom in her wake.

But sometimes there is justice! A police cruiser saw the whole thing, turned the flashing lights on, and sped after the speeding lady.

If only it would be that way all the time!

Rudeness has made a comeback, not that it ever left. It is leaving offended people behind it as it races on. I see it at high school sporting events, not just with the students, but also with the adults. Once in a while a display of good sportsmanship emerges to the point that it is commended and put on YouTube, but those have become the exceptions and not the norm.

I see it in how young people treat older people, and how older people treat younger people.

I see it in politics, but enough of that!

I see it in how people treat someone who is overweight; and I see it in how someone who is slower than another person can tolerate.

I especially see it in driving habits.

And now I see it in Facebook posts and Twitter tweets.

I see it on t-shirts that seek to either incite, draw attention, or both.

And I see it in the church.

Rudeness has become the norm.

The thing is…there’s this list qualities and characteristics that are written down in Galatians 5 by the Apostle Paul. It’s a good list! A list that many of us would want to see lived out in our child, or the potential marriage partner that we bring home to meet Mom and Dad. It’s a list of fruits, spiritual fruits. As I look at that list- love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control- each of the fruits goes sharply against rudeness in some way.

If I’m patient I won’t try to rush ahead and cut someone off.

If I’m kind I won’t look for the first opening to tear someone down.

If I’m joyful there will be no bitterness in my actions.

 

Rudeness is a slippery slope sliding towards ripped apart relationships.

And why do we give in to its lure. Because even though we don’t want to admit it, too often it is still all about you, or all about me. And if you point that out to me I may call you rude!

Categories: Christianity, Community, Freedom, Grace, love, Story, The Church, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment