Tonight I found myself alone in the car driving back from Knoxville, where I had dropped off some friends at the bus terminal, when, looking ahead on the road, I could see a curtain of torrential rain rising up to meet me.
Now, for those who do not know me, allow me to explain that I absolutely hate driving, especially on the interstate. (I am much happier cruising down deserted mountain roads.) Add the darkness of night and the prospects of a terrible rainstorm and you essentially have one of my worst motor nightmares.
As I continued driving to meet the coming storm, though, something seemed to change. Instead of freaking out or trying to talk myself into pulling off at the next exit, I took a deep breath, sat up in my seat and heard myself say, "Okay, God, please calm this down and get me through it safely." (You might have correctly inferred already that this would not be my normal reaction to such adverse interstate conditions.)
Before I knew it, rain was slamming into my windshield and my wipers were hard-pressed to keep up with the swarms of droplets pounding the car. Visibility dropped significantly; I couldn't have gotten off the road if I had wanted to now that spotting any exit was next to impossible. There was nothing to do but press on...and keep on praying.
God often reminds me of random things when I'm in strange or trying situations, and most times they have an uncanny way of being exactly what I need to remember to make it through the situation. Tonight was no exception. In the midst of my stream of thought, which was presently full of my father's voice telling me how to avoid hydroplaning and my own mental faculties constantly checking the flow of traffic around me, came a piece of driving advice that my mother had given me about how to drive on a dark country road when oncoming traffic had neglected to dim their bright lights: Follow the yellow line on the edge of the road. Keep your eyes on the yellow line and you'll know where you need to be, no matter what else you can or cannot see.
How glad I am that I had stored that little driving tip somewhere near the "How to Drive in Rain" section of my mental driving manual! Without further ado, I flicked on the fog lights of my little car and set my mind to concentrating on following the unbroken yellow line on the edge of the road. After about ten minutes of tedious travel, the rain began to lighten, and I broke out of the torrential curtain. The rest of the journey home was fairly uneventful, weather-wise: just a few showers and sprinklings here and there as the interstate wound back to my small city, and for that I am truly thankful.
Now, what, you might ask, did I learn from this incident? Surely it is something about staying calm in situations or never taking even the smallest pieces of advice for granted. Kind of, but not quite.
Tonight I learned what happens when we go through storms in our lives. We use the term "storm" to mean a tempestuous or rocky time in any aspect of our Christian walk, but especially when things seem to all crash at once. During those times, we sometimes feel as though we are just tossing in a sea of despair with only the tormenting wind to toss us wherever it pleases. I realize now, though, that is not the case whatsoever.
God wasted no time after Moses' death in reminding Joshua, "I will never leave you nor forsake you" (Joshua 1:5), a promise that Paul reminds the New Testament church of in Hebrews 13:5. If this promise is indeed still true today (and I believe wholeheartedly that it is), then God does not leave us to be knocked about in the storms of our lives. There will always be that unbroken yellow line comprised of God's love, mercy and guidance that serves as "a lamp to [our] feet and a light to [our] path", as David described it in Psalm 119:105.
We may not be able to see where we will be when the storm ends, but we can have confidence in the fact that we did not come to be there accidentally.
"For this is God,
Our God forever and ever;
He will be our guide
Even to death."
Psalm 48:14
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