Tail Lights

When I was in college and still living in L.A. I had a fairly large circle of friends.  Because it was large, there was a bit of a ranking.  The easiest way to describe it would be as having friends-at-a-distance (you know them just well enough to know they're going to be a lot of work if you get closer), good friends (usually easy to get along with) and best friends (no explanation necessary but this bit makes the sentence symmetrical). 

At some evening social gathering or the other, a good part of the entire circle decided to go someplace else that was a ways distant.  I didn't know where it was so I said I'd follow one of the "friends-at-a-distance."  He drove like a bat out of hell all the time but I do believe his annoying quotient was in full dominance that night.  He believed it would be funny to drive 90, weave through traffic and leave me behind. 

I remember this:  I tried to followed his tail lights as he dodged in and out of traffic for quite awhile.  I could not keep up and eventually his tail lights merged in the distance into everything else.  He had lost me and I could no longer follow.

I follow Christ.  There are a couple major contrasts with following Christ as compared to the debacle described above. 

First, Christ wants you to be able to keep up, to the point that he'll go back and get you in many cases and at the very least wait for you.  In this latter case, he will continue to wait even if you get off someplace well short of the intended destination. 

Second, Christ is a very patient driver.  He wants you to arrive at the destination.  He even wants you to enjoy the journey...even in heavy traffic. 

Interesting thing is I could follow my "friend's" car (note the ironic use of quotes) because I knew what it looked like.  Christ's car is a good deal more pronounced than all the others.  It's pretty cool.  It's defined by our understanding of him gained by relationship and grace and by what we know of him from the bible.  It's easy to follow if you keep your eyes open and are willing to deal with the traffic. 

It's a broken world and accidents will happen.  In those cases, Christ stops and renders assistance.  The assistance is so profound that if we accept the help he offers we'll soon be thanking him for our terrible accident, even when it's limiting, debilitating, painful or all of the above. 

Of course, we can wave him off and choose to deal with it ourselves.  Even though I'm very much a DIY kind of guy, this is an area where I try to let him do the heavy lifting.  He's just a whole lot better at it than I am.

I want to close by discussing the tail lights a bit.  That is, to hammer the final nails in the metaphor's coffin.

If we don't know who and what we're following, if we can't recognize the tail lights when they sit immediately in front of us, we'll have trouble following.  People do this and then organize themselves into communities of the intentionally blind, at least partly because they're at core not sure that they'll like the destination or who they are when they get there.  Following and traveling changes not only our location.  It also changes who we are. 

We will all end up very different then what we are.  Following Christ means abandoning the old gathering and location and going someplace different.  There's really no room in the car for the things that held us at the old party.  For some it is a big, profound and even integral part of their being that gets left behind.  Leaving can be hard...even very hard...and even very sad.  And even if you leave the party with some baggage you will be required to submit it for inspection and possibly rejection later.  You though, will always be allowed and even begged to pass.

But the road beckons both with it's own promise and with the vision of the destination.  As the journey begins the romance of change takes us over. If we pursue the tail lights we will arrive.  If we don't, it's going to be a long drive.