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Scraping our Problems off the Windshield of Life

We had our first hard frost in Virginia the other morning.  I discovered this shortly after starting my truck and realizing that I was without a windshield scraper.

It was before dawn and very brisk….I had a decision to make: Do I sit lazily and wait for the defrost to melt the ice away, or try to improvise and use a credit card or other make-shift object?  I chose lazy, and waited…..but only until there was a round 8” clearing in the frost at the very bottom of the windshield.

Driving Blind!

So here I am driving down the road, hunched over, peering through this tiny hole!....couldn’t see much to say the least (don’t say anything, you know you’ve done it too.)  Luckily, by the time I reached the highway, the windshield was mostly clear and I could see enough to drive safely.

After traveling a few miles down the road, the heat had really kicked in and every spec of frost was melted away.  Plus, it was getting nice and toasty inside the truck.  Life was good……until I broke over a hill and found myself driving directly toward the newly risen sun.

The glare was unbearable, not so much because of the brightness of the sun, but because the inside of the windshield was covered in a dirty/smoky film that distorted the sunlight, causing it to scatter, and basically rendering me unable to see.  I immediately had to pull off the road and clean the film off the inside of the windshield.  I pulled back onto the road.  Finally, I could see clearly and drive toward the sun!

"Problems" Inside and Out

Our lives aren’t all that different from windshields.  There are forces from without and within that obscure our vision, and keep us from finding our way toward God.  It takes great effort on our part to keep our windshields clean.

The stuff on the outside; frost, mud, or whatever, is our life situation.  These are the components of our lives that are observable to the outside world.  They exist in the space that surrounds us.  These outside forces such as problems at work, relationships, money, etc, inhibit our ability to see our path….if we allow them.  The key is to either change or accept these parts of our life situation that we consider “problems”.  Either alternative increases vision, one acts as defrost and melts the problem away, and the other acts as Rain-X and allows the problem to just roll off of us, but both are proactive measures.  Acceptance is not the same as doing nothing about our problems, which like choosing to drive down the road blindly with perfectly good windshield wipers.....we have to do something!

The stuff on the inside of our windshields is what Christ spoke of when he taught about keeping the inside of our cups clean.  What’s funny is that the film that had developed over time didn’t become evident until the light from the sun glared on it. God reveals to us what we need to change in our lives by shining the light of His spirit on it.  Over time, we begin to see how this “film” obscures our vision of the pathway toward the Son.  Sometimes we even have to “pull off the road” and allow Him to make us clean once again.

How else do windshields apply to life?.....didn't even get into cracks or bugs.