Recently we had the opportunity to drive a rental car with lots of bells and whistles. As I was driving it home on our little backroad, I happened to drive onto the yellow line for a moment and felt the steering wheel vibrate on the left side. That was a little surprising!
I immediately recognized that it was a safety feature built into this car. But I also immediately felt a strong desire to drive back over the yellow line again just to test the feature. How crazy! I have NEVER tried to ride on the line. Yet this vehicle caused me to WANT to do just that.
Later, when my husband was driving it, I told him about this feature. He had to test those lines, too! Together we discovered that it would vibrate when driving on the white line on the right side of the road. It would vibrate when crossing the white lines while changing lanes. If we continued driving on a line for more than a few seconds, the vibration would cease.
And interestingly, the feature did not always work. We could not establish whether it was a result of mud tracked onto the road, older paint, or trees blocking the satellites, but on one road and within the span of one mile, the wheel would sometimes vibrate and sometimes not.
So this car feature, which was designed specifically for our safety, produced in us a desire to do unsafe things!
(Obviously, we did not test this while there was oncoming traffic or when conditions were otherwise unsafe.)
The Reminder
Of course this verse came to mind:
7 What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died; 10 and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me;
Romans 7:7-10
Isn’t that car feature exactly how the Law works? Instead of staying far from the line of sin, we try to flirt with it to see just how close we can come or how much we can get away with. Oh what a mess! But what a perfect analogy.
Thankfully, we quickly exchanged that vehicle for one with fewer bells and whistles. No more temptation. There is a verse about that, too.
Once again, God used mundane things of life to instruct us in His word.
Keep walking along the way – and stay off the lines.
Rebecca
