Ruts

It’s amazing how ruts work. When I was first learning to drive, we lived along a well traveled dirt road. After a good rain, the road would be rutted from the many cars that traveled it. Once the dirt road would dry out, the ruts would be hard and formed and they would alter how you drove on it. If you’ve ever driven down heavily traveled dirt roads, you know what it’s like to feel your vehicle suddenly shift and drop into ruts made by those who have gone down the road before you. If it is a dirt road you lived on, then chances are you made those ruts. No matter how hard you try to avoid them, eventually you will feel the car jolt over and drop in the ruts and steering becomes a frustrating experience. The ruts act as tracks and this is why there aren’t steering wheels on train engines.
All this to say, I get in ruts. I’m in a rut now. Ruts are those old patterns in life that seem to haunt us and as we go down the dirt road of life that we live on, we fall back into the ruts that we made the last time we traveled that way. I’ve tried turning the steering wheel to make my car jump out, but it is no use. I recently thought of the title of a song “Jesus Take the Wheel” and that’s exactly what I want Him to do. So, I slid over to the passenger seat and offered the driver’s seat to Jesus, but He slid me back over behind the wheel! He told me that if this metaphor put Him at the wheel, then I would be free of having to make choices since He would be making them all for me. That would not do. I am left to make choices and do my part. He said that He would go up ahead at the appropriate spot in the road and get his road crew started. It’s a family-owned road crew as it turns out. A Father and Son and Spirit team and the Father has many adopted children that He employs as well. They would get some of the ruts out up ahead, but for now His grace was sufficient. I honestly don’t like that answer. That means that I have to continue through the discomfort my situation for now. A man named Paul had some affliction that he prayed to God three times to remove and God gave him the same answer, “My grace is sufficient.” This same Paul also wrote that he did not “consider that the sufferings of this present time are worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us.” Paul stated that God works all things out for the good of those who love Him, those who are called according to His purpose. Those He called are justified and those who are justified are glorified. So, there’s something to look forward to, I guess. But this is going to require some perseverance. Where does that come from? Oh, yeah the grace. It comes from God’s gift of grace that has saved me through faith. It is that grace that has re-created me in Christ for the good works that God prepared beforehand so that I might walk in them. I guess in keeping with the metaphor… “so that I might steer in them.” As it turns out, sometimes we have to follow the ruts until a better spot in the road comes up. If you don’t keep the car moving, it can get bogged down and stuck up to its axles. God has prepared the good works ahead and He’s using the ruts now to get me there. Maybe staying in the ruts is preventing me from sliding off into the ditch not to mention there may be a few good works to do while in the ruts. Whatever the reasons, I pray that I can rely on that grace and pray without doubt for God’s wisdom as I navigate the frustrating ruts of this life. It’s amazing how much you can learn about life from dirt roads. Don’t even get me started on the dusty days or the ripples that form and rattle your fenders off! Guess you have to drive it to understand.