Drifting Off the Road
You are driving up the side of a mountain, driving at a slow rate of speed, and at times the road is both narrow and treacherous. If it wasn’t for the guardrails, one slip of your tire and down the side of the mountain you go.
Maybe, instead, you are on California’s legendary Pacific Coast Highway, one of the most scenic drives in the world. The view overlooking the ocean is spectacular, but again, without guardrails, one accidental jerk of the steering wheel and into the ocean you go.
[The PCH is one of America’s most iconic highways, probably only second to Route 66, which was decommissioned in 1985, and now only remains in segments as “Historic Route 66.” John Steinbeck’s 1940 novel Grapes of Wrath chronicled the exodus of farmers who left the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression, hoping to find California a better place to live.]
Guardrails keep vehicles from entering dangerous or off-limit areas. In the event your car does drift off the road, they also help to minimize damage by keeping you in the safety zone. Guardrails usually start ahead of the danger area, before you actually need them.
Not only are there guardrails along roads, think of all the places you go in which some sort of barrier, a guardrail, is put up to keep you from falling or entering off-limit areas. The railing on your hotel balcony is nothing more than a guardrail, to keep you from falling. The guard in front of a piece of machinery is also a guardrail, intended to help prevent injury to the worker. That railing around the seal pool at the zoo is a guardrail to prevent you from falling or jumping into the water. The fence around your yard, it helps to keep people you’ve not invited out of your yard; it too is a guardrail. The orange cones in construction areas are nothing more than guardrails to keep cars from entering the work zone.
We need guardrails in life as well. We need guardrails to keep us from those dangerous and off-limit people, places, and things that can derail us, causing and creating harm to us and others. God has given us freedom of choice (free will) to do and say as we please, and without guardrails, because of our sinful nature, we will invariably find our way into destructive places. God calls us to read His Word and listen to His Spirit in order to avoid danger zones. Paul tells us this in Ephesians 5:17 – “Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” We all have enormous capacity for self-deception; that innate ability to rationalize our desire, but by tuning into God’s will we have guardrails to protect us from handing control of our lives over to someone or something other than Him.
We are to seek God’s wisdom to guide our lives, allowing us to grow in maturity, building personal guardrails around us. Here is what we read in 2 Timothy 2:22 – “So flee youthful passions [inclinations of your mind] and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.”
So, when you find yourself drifting off the road or straying into dangerous and off-limit areas, know that God’s guardrails help you veer back onto the pavement or climb back to safety– “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).