Stay Straight

By Mollie Bond –

When I was a 5 year old, I often watched my mom get in the car, put the keys in the ignition, and turn the key. One day, as my mom wrapped up her day as the church secretary, she handed me the keys to the jeep. “Here,” she said, “wait in the car.”

Feeling the weight of her trust in the keys she handed me, I pranced outside. Thinking I could do something that would make my mom happy, I got in the driver’s side, and just like my mom, put the keys in the ignition. Look at me! What would really make her happy? Trying to do everything just like she did: I turned the key.

I think I screamed. The steering wheel felt unnatural in my small hands. The manual transmission had been left in neutral. The jeep lurched past the sidewalk, down the little embankment, and straight into…this is where my memory stops.

The top level of our church had two wings held together by a narrow hallway with offices on the right, and the sanctuary on the left. The hallway area also enclosed the entry way to stairs leading to the lower level and overlooking the basketball court. The jeep hit right between the two wings, smack-dab at the top of those stairs. I took out the front wall.

The following Sunday, plastic covered the front of the church. One beam remained unbroken. If that board had broken, I would have traveled in the jeep down the stairs and out to the lower level.

Gripping the steering wheel and making sure I kept straight, kept that beam steady enough to hold.

PRAYER: God, I might try to take hold of the wheel and do what I think will make me happy. Instead, I’d like to learn how to keep going straight, listening to Your voice before I put the car in gear. I’m giving You room to speak to me today.

“Do not turn aside from any of the commands I give you today, to the right or to the left, following other gods and serving them” (Deuteronomy 28:14 NIV).