“The gate is wide and the road easy that leads off a cliff, and there are many who drive it. But the gate is narrow and the road is bumpy that leads to life, and there are few who take it.”
Matthew 7:13-14
“There will be a highway called the Holy Road… It’s for God’s people exclusively—impossible to get lost on this road. Not even fools can get lost on it.”
Isaiah 35:8
“Life is a highway, I’m gonna drive it all night long,” as the song goes. It is filled with twists and turns, bumps and potholes, dead end streets and never-ending expressways. We find roads diverging in every different direction, and we assume all roads lead to somewhere. Life’s roads are cluttered with impatient drivers, all racing at high speeds trying to beat each other to the next red light. We are all trying to get somewhere, cooperating just enough to avoid a collision on the way. Sunday drivers are passed up by the more ambitious, aggressive drivers. You have to be quick off the line to survive in this fast-paced world. It is life in the fast lane.
When considering hectic, fast-paced, dog-eat-dog world we inhabit, there is perhaps no better analogy than that of driving. In fact, modern transportation is the very reason for the high-speed lifestyles we lead. It is estimated that U.S. drivers/passengers put on 5.0 trillion miles in 2002, an average of about 17,000 miles for every man, woman, and child.
In 2003, the median travel time for the daily commute to work and back was 21 minutes. That calculates to roughly 175 hours per year in the car—and that’s just for work! Over a 40-year career, one will spend approximately 291 full days behind the wheel!
Driving is not only time consuming, it is an incredibly costly pastime as well. According to the U. S. Department of Transportation, the total societal cost of crashes exceeds $230 billion annually.
With gasoline prices skyrocketing, the average American household is expected to spend over $2,000 dollars at the pump in 2006.
The rush hour ritual has even made its way into our everyday speech. Common driving idioms include, “I’m running on empty.” “You’re driving me crazy!” “We’ve reached the end of the road.” Since driving is such an integral part of our everyday lives, and we spend so many hours a week engaged in it, we would be foolish not to “pull over” for a while to consider the spiritual lessons to be learned from this Sacred Analogy.
Buckle up and join us for this series called “Rush Hour.”
Kingdom Harbor 