The God of Traffic Lights and Parking Spots

There is a notoriously long light near where I live that I almost always seem to get to just as it's turning red for the arrow left. I wait for three or four minutes for it to turn, usually impatiently, particularly since if I had been just ten seconds earlier, I could have saved myself four minutes. Yesterday, I was running a couple minutes late for church and I got to this light just as it turned yellow on the cross road, so I got the green arrow within seconds of stopping. I looked upward and said a little thank you to God and then a thought hit me:

Why am I more grateful this morning that a traffic light went in my favor than I am for the gift of salvation?

I didn't know what to say. I'm not even sure I know the answer, even though I've had a full day since then to think about it.

I think there are several reasons. First is that we tend to forget about or take for granted things we already have. Most people in the world still don't have their own laptop, their own car, a GPS, and an HDTV, yet here I'm typing merrily away on the first, with the others at my disposal and I haven't thought about them today until I typed this. I haven't thought about how grateful I am to have a mother that sacrificed so much for us or friends that are still friends even after...I've shown how human I am.

I treat salvation like this. I have it, and so it's not important enough to me to think about every day. What I think about every day instead are the things I don't have and really want.

Perhaps the real problem is that I see the goal as having been accomplished. I have salvation. Yay! Now on to something else. The reality is that even though I will go to Heaven when I die, the journey is just starting. I have lived nearly 30 years. This means, statistically, that I have about 50 to go. Considering that I'm living healthier now and have never smoked, drank all that much, done drugs, or often tried risky and dangerous things, and also that longevity runs in the family, it's not out of the question that I could hit 90 or even 100. In other words, I still probably have nearly 2/3 (possibly more) of my life yet to live.

In my near 30 years, I've learned so much, developed all sorts of good and bad characteristics, corrected some of the bad ones, seen some of the good ones wane, and have become an overall better person in the last three years. I had put my life on hold for five years after college (and in some ways, even the last two years), but I know I need to get it moving again.

I am playing Final Fantasy VII for probably the twentieth time and I love the game not only for the story and gameplay, but for how I level up. I get stronger through new weapons, abilities, armor, and levels. I don't feel this way in the real world. I don't feel like I've improved too much in most areas and I need that sense of accomplishment and progress. The reality, though, is that I am still a low-level Christian, with so much room for growth, so many battles left to fight, and prizes far greater than anything found in a game waiting for me to discover them.

I think another part of the problem is that we focus too much on what's right in front of us. At my old job, we had a phrase "putting out fires" to describe our general mindset. We would ignore things until they became an emergency and then have to deal with them. Because we didn't proactively deal with issues very well, it was one fire after another, leaving us little time to think ahead, so the problem was cyclical. My life tends to be like that. I focus on what I want, not what I need, and so I have neither most of the time, which leaves me wanting what I want even more.

We forget not only that there is something greater than us and our wants, but also that there is a future. When I'm stuck at a light and know I'm going to be late somewhere, I'm not thinking that it probably doesn't matter to anyone but me when I show up or that by tomorrow, everyone who does notice will probably have forgotten anyway, or that a week from now I won't even think about it again; I'm thinking that I can't fail them or embarrass myself by not being punctual.

During all this, I forget that God loves me sometimes. I question how good He is because He's letting me be late by not making the traffic light go my way, forgetting what Jesus did for me, how much attention God gives to everything I do, and how deep His mercy runs for me. I try to remind myself of it at times, but I often make Him the God of Traffic Lights and Parking Spots more than the God of my life. I wish I could find a way to see Him as glorious and amazing as He really is...and remember it the next time I'm stuck at that light.