Ah, the joys of not being able to drive!

As my vision has improved, I’ve had friends say, “You’ll get to drive in no time.” I’m sorry to burst your bubble but as much of a change as I have experienced, my vision won’t improve that much. It has a long way to go before I can see a stop sign from several car lengths away. I’m okay with that; for the most part, I’m very content in my non-driver status.

Am I crazy? Driving a car is an inalienable right akin to life, liberty, and the pursuit of the American dream. Car ownership is a major life convenience bordering on necessity. Car keys represent power, control, and independence. Talk to any older person forced to give up their driver’s license or that sixteen year old ready to wrap their grimy mitts around that gear shift. Oh wait, do cars come equipped with gear shifts? Did I mention I’ve never driven before?

As a quiet bystander to the stories about driving escapades, I can tell you, there are days I’m glad I don’t drive.

Consider this:

I have never

• Lost my car keys.
• Locked myself out of my car before an important job interview.
• Backed into a utility pole.
• Failed the driver’s test.
• Needed to change a flat tire.
• Driven the wrong way on a one way street.
• Got stuck in a pit of mud on a back woods road (but my #1 sweetie has!).
• Had to worry whether Geico is 15% less than my current auto insurance or consider the option of no-fault insurance. After all, a car collision is never my fault unless I distract the driver.

  

Best of all,

I’ve never been tempted to talk a police officer out of a traffic ticket. Wait a minute. That sounds like fun!

Am I making light of the situation? Perhaps. I do have my down days where I wish I could drive. It would be nice not to have to depend on other people for the simplest of tasks like going to the grocery store for some bananas or slipping up to Dairy Queen for a secret root beer float. Some days, I have an overwhelming urge to escape my ordinary life and, like James T. Kirk from Star Trek, “see what’s out there.”

In those moments, I remind myself of this:

Not owning a car or a driver’s license can have its benefits.

Time-saver. My personal poll on Facebook revealed the number of hours people spend driving. It varied tremendously based on their season of life and where they lived, but I quickly got the idea. I have the gift of an extra four to twenty hours a week where I’m not wasting time behind a wheel. My literary agent thinks I’m such a hard worker; the truth is, I’ve got the time to write, knit, AND plays games on my tablet because I stay at home.

Money saver. My husband should be ecstatic. I save him more than 15% on overall car expenses. We own only one car and I’m not taking all those trips to the grocery store ten miles away. When we go to town, we combine errands and make each trip count. When he frets over the cost of my airline ticket to visit family in Arizona, I remind him that I’ve saved three times the cost of the airline ticket in one year because he’s the only driver in the family.

My adult daughter who works as a University instructor and who hasn’t driven until recently, was content with her modest salary. “It’s plenty,” she said. “Why would anyone want more than this?”

“You don’t make car payments or pay for car insurance,” I told her.

Slower pace: How do I manage? I walk. Walking is a good thing. Aside from the cardio-vascular workout, walking to the store makes me slow down and enjoy the sights: the birds flitting from tree to tree, the flowers on porches, and the clouds morphing into new shapes. When you drive, you go too fast to catch the details.

Companionship: “You’re so lucky,” an aunt told me. “You have all these fascinating stories of people you’ve been with because you have to ask others for rides. Me? I just get in my car and go. By myself.” She’s right. I always have to be with someone else in a car. I get a ring side seat on the stories in their lives.

It works the other way. I have a sentence from Carol Kent’s book, “Becoming a Woman of Influence” on my white board that reminds me of the importance of discipling along life’s way. It says, “Make every contact count.” Just think of all my extra connections with people because I have to ask for rides. And the driver is a captive audience!

Compassion and Inspiration: I understand the frustration of the elderly about relinquishing those car keys. I’ve had many talks with older people who seem relieved that SOMEONE understands. I’m able to share with them how to adapt and that surrendering that license is not the beginning of the end.

Dependence on God: Necessity is the mother of dependence on God. From the age of sixteen, transportation issues threw me at the feet of Jesus and I found Him faithful. I’ve learned to pray that God provide a way for me to get where I need to go. Once I wanted to go to a writer’s conference 300 miles away. I got there and back—four drivers and one Greyhound bus later. Every transfer was a step of faith and a proof that if God calls you, He will resource you.

What keeps you from doing all that you want to do?

Look at the benefits and the hidden blessings. Maybe you aren’t missing out on so much after all. Sometimes the having brings more grief than the wanting.

Relinquish your need to God. Give Him room to work. Ask Him to show you the benefits of not having what you want and how He has filled in the cracks of your need.

He might surprise you at the wisdom of His alternate plan. He’s very creative. He’ll provide for you in a way that will make you and those watching you shake your heads and say, “Only God!”

My daughter had big plans for her twenty-first birthday. Freedom awaits!

In most states, turning twenty-one means a young person has the freedom to purchase and consume alcoholic beverages without the prohibition of law. It’s a day to party!

Is it? What did Christine do?

She invited a group of friends to celebrate with her at Columbus, Ohio’s famous Graeter’s Ice Cream store.

You see, Christine wasn’t celebrating her right to drink. She was commemorating her freedom of choice. She now had the freedom to choose for herself whether she would drink alcohol. She made the public statement that she chose not to.

The freedom to choose is innate within all of us.

It’s God-given. Theologians call it free-will. Whether it’s the food we eat, the music we listen to on the car radio, or whether we wear a seat-belt, all of us want to make those decisions for ourselves instead of someone making them for us.

The illustration of my daughter might seem silly. My other examples, like whether to wear a seat-belt might suggest that freedom of choice is a bad thing; some things need limits and control to protect ourselves from ourselves. We need laws to restrain our baser nature and to teach us the difference between right and wrong.

Consider this. What if you lived under restrictions that in themselves were wrong? Laws that prohibited you from doing what you believed he Bible taught was right? What if those restrictions pertained particularly to how and where you worshipped God? What if you lived under laws  that dictated how you worshipped God, how you tithed money to the Church and how your practiced your faith.

That’s the dilemma our Founding Fathers faced.

That is why fifty-six men signed their names to a declaration of independence during the summer of 1776. A shallow view of history portrays that they were declaring their desire for self-government. At the core, however, was this desire to choose for themselves how they worshipped God.

The Church of England and the state of England at the time were one entity. Any law made by the state, good or bad, was sanctioned by the Church because the state and the Church was one and the same. As leaders sanctioned by the Church and supposedly chosen by God, any law carried a double weight to it. You had to obey because the state told you to and the Church told you to as well.

Moreover, there was only one church-the Church of England. Our forefathers didn’t have the luxury of shopping for a church of their choice like we do in modern day America. If anyone dared to start another church, they were quickly reprimanded and persecuted. That is why the Pilgrims left England. They wanted the freedom to choose their own church and to worship, minister and operate under their own governing structure. To the state-church, this bordered on treason.

You can read more about this separation in my article, “The Real Freedom Fighters” in the Lookout magazine.

Choose this day whom you will serve

Our forefathers didn’t want someone else pushing man made rules diametrically opposed to what the Bible taught. They no longer wanted to participate in a religion based on an outward form that propagated self-greed and avarice. Even if they ran the risk of making bad choices, they wanted the freedom to choose.

This Fourth of July, celebrate what your forefather bought with their blood for you. The freedom to worship God as you perceive in the Bible. The right to choose a congregation of your choice. The right to make decisions based on the moral compass God has given you.

Yes, the United States is not perfect. More and more, Christians are feeling the squeeze of unjust, hostile-to-religion laws. In spite of that, we still claim far more freedom than what our Founding Father experienced under the state and Church of England.

Celebrate and cherish your freedom, the freedom to choose what is right.

The Fellowship Hall at the Roseville Church was a lively place the half hour before worship services were to begin one Sunday morning. Small groups of men and women clustered, moved apart, and then reformed into new groups.

What were they talking about?

• A grandmother showed pictures of a grandson who competed and qualified in a triathlon less than five months after a near fatal car accident.
• A woman who had endured months of hip pain was sharing encouraging medical reports from a doctor’s visit she’d received that week.

  

• A mom told how her adult daughter, who had been told all her life she’d never be able to drive, had bought her first car at age 27 (okay, that was me. J )
• Three women huddled to make plans to pamper a church member whose husband had been recently diagnosed with cancer.

Whoops. 9:25. The groups merged and moved into the auditorium, faces full of happiness.

When did worship begin in that small town church?

Was worship:

• The singing?
• Communion?
• The preaching?
• All of the above? And more?

Did worship begin at 9:30?

I don’t think so. I think worship began long before the published hour of 9:30. It began when people gathered and interacted with each other to share what God had done in their lives that week and as they showed support to their brothers and sisters in Christ. I’d give a guess that God was smiling big time.

Some people grumble that it’s too noisy in worship centers right before church services begin. Attenders ought to enter the sanctuary with reverence so we don’t disturb those who are already sitting quietly, contemplating the wonder of their God.

I don’t know. Something would have been missing if all those people in the Fellowship Hall had followed that idea of taking their seat without talking to each other. We would have missed out on the blessing and encouragement we received by the reports of God at work in our midst.

Psalm 100:4 says,

Enter his gates with thanksgiving
    and his courts with praise;
    give thanks to him and praise his name.

I have a feeling that those people at the Roseville Church didn’t need to be told to enter God’s courts with praise. So overwhelmed at seeing God at work in their lives in the past week, they couldn’t help themselves.

If worship is giving credit to God, telling Him how much He is worth to us, and finding ways to honor Him by serving His people, I would say that group of people, gathered around a coffee pot, were worshipping God. The worship flowed right into the auditorium. The interaction beforehand gave those excited people something tangible for which to praise their God. The stories gave them even more reason to sing with renewed meaning:

Majesty! Worship His Majesty!
Unto Jesus be all glory, honor, and praise!

What gives you reason to worship God this coming week?