Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Road of Life…

When one goes through hard times, one’s motivation to keep walking forward feels like a candle flickering in front of a cyclone. I guess when struggles are really tough, some people effectively get doused out… Those people fall, and like a fault shattering through a piece of concrete to release the stress of the weight on the concrete, and they seek out vents for the built up stress, tension and anxieties. Some people fall into drugs, alcohol and all sorts of addictions… work… whatever… in order to break off and vent like an overheated car venting out steam…. I guess as a christian, faith in Jesus is like having the best mechanic in the world with all the parts he could ever need sitting in your passenger seat… But one must still be willing to give him control of the car, and to let him maintain and keep your car in good shape… Although as humans, we tend to be stubborn… We like to take control of our lives even when the direction we take or our methods of doing things or the way we live our lives simply is not good for us or good for those around us. It’s like driving and ignoring all the warning lights, low oil, low coolant, low fuel etc. We have a tendency of being self-sufficient to the point of breaking down… Until we are stranded and have no where to go, with no help in reach… Only then do we realise that the pers0n with the ability to completely fix and top up our car has been sitting beside us the whole time. With Jesus, one is never alone… He will always be there to help you get through whatever your facing… But even in the face of trials, one must still humble oneself and admit one is lost and broken down, unable to move on by ourselves… We still must commit everything to Jesus for him to get us out. You can’t say, can you fill up my car… but don’t touch the radiator, don’t fill the coolant back  up, because you’re bound to get only a few more km’s before your car overheats again.  You must let him fix everything…

It doesn’t matter what kind of car represents your life, perhaps its a sleek supercar or its a rickity antique of a car. I’d gather most of us do not know how to maintain it. You’re life is a God given gift, the manufacturer is God… the chief mechanic is Jesus… and comes with lifetime warrantee… but you still need to let Jesus into your life to let him change and fix things.

If I go back to the candle analogy, we all know that putting tissue paper into a candle will cause it to burn up very quickly… Extremely effective fuel. But not everything burns up that quickly… Some things don’t burn well… they will cause the fire to diminish, like putting sand into the fire. Even as a christian, sometimes it feels like i’m being blown all over the place… You ask god for direction and he answers… but sometimes what he decides for you is hard to swallow… Like he’s putting in some unknown substance into the candle.. you struggle to break it down and burn it up as fuel. It’s sometimes difficult to imagine how God will get me through some situations… But when he does, you  burn so much brighter than you did before…

Back to the car analogy, I guess even if you hand everything over to Jesus, the road you travel with him will still go through some dark and scary places… but you won’t be alone… and you know he will get you through it… You won’t be stranded because he will always find a way to get you out…

I think even as a Christian, I still struggle to give everything to Jesus… when life gets scary I’m still like a petrified idiot that doesn’t know what to do. When the going gets tough, I still feel under the weather… which is natural… But it’s tiring and nerve-racking… But I know that I am in better hands because Jesus is with me through it all.