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Even though I now reside in a special care home, I still worry about my wife. She is just too independent! The last week of November, 2024, she left for an 800 km drive to see her American family for Thanksgiving. By herself, naturally.... Doesn't she know this is potentially dangerous? Especially when they were calling for snow later in the day?
She was, apparently, about 200 kms down the road trip when she got a message saying that one of her tires was low on air. Rather than stopping at the next service station to have it fixed, she continued on, "monitoring" the status. When she stopped to charge our electric car, she tried to put in air, but after trying three broken machines, she gave up and continued on her way, without even checking to see what might be causing the leak! To her credit, she was monitoring the pressure regularly, and though the tire was low, it wasn't continuing to lose air. Nonetheless, she should have been more persistent in getting air, and she shouldn't have continued driving without it!
When she arrived at her destination, her brother checked the tire and immediately found a large nail...
She and I have always complemented each other in many areas, and the area of caution is certainly one of them. I admit that I tend to be overcautious; but she also admits to having a bit too much of a naive attitude that nothing bad will happen to her! She takes chances she shouldn't take, and now that I'm in a home, I can't stop her anymore... I could only look at the weather report, which called for heavy snow on the day she was supposed to return, and pray that she would have sense enough to leave on a different day...
I already admitted that I'm overcautious by nature, and I will make one more confession... Some of the things I am overcautious about really aren't all that important. Having enough air in your tire for a long road trip, however, is definitely something that is worth being overcautious about!
There is another large category of things that are definitely worth being overcautious about, and that is the presence of sin in our lives.
Just like my wife really didn't know when she set out on the trip that there was something wrong with the tire, sometimes we don't recognize that there is sin in our lives. However, just like the tire started leaking air slowly, hidden sin in our lives will have an impact! Maybe you don't realize anything is wrong, for example, but you may begin to notice that you aren't as patient as you should be. Just like that soft tire should have made my wife stop and inspect the tire's tread, impatience needs to be inspected. You shouldn't continued the "road trip" of your life unless you know why that impatience is there. Maybe it is rooted in grief. Maybe in suppressed or unforgiven anger or both. Maybe it is rooted in deep worry. Whatever it is, you won't stop being impatient until the cause of the impatience is dealt with, and continuing on with life won't keep you from being impatient.
Another example is depression. Depression may be rooted in medical causes; but it can also be rooted in worry or frustration. Again, the depression won't go away until the root cause is dealt with.
I could go on with examples, but you get the point. The Psalmist cries out to God: "Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." (Psalms 139:23-24 NIV). In the same way, we need to be crying out to God to reveal our sin to us.
My hat is off to my brother-in-law, who insisted that my wife get the tire fixed before heading back up to Canada... If only we would be as diligent about discovering our sin and ridding ourselves of it...
Inspired by Rob Chaffart
Founder, Answers2Prayer Ministries
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