These days, my car tells me what’s wrong and if the signal lights are red I’m supposed to take notice!

Ok, the light was orange, the buzzer noisy, and I could read the words about the tyre pressure (low). I use my car a fair bit and, on this occasion, I was far from home, so I couldn’t (shouldn’t!) ignore it. I found a petrol station, got out, and looked at the tyre (that’s a good diagnostic tool!) but the tyre didn’t look flat. Nevertheless I checked the air in all the tyres – and yes, I did have to put a little air in the one in question. Onward I drove but the light was still on. Since I was over 2 hours from home, I found a tyre place and yes, they would check. A little while later I was called into the workshop and there was a large nail in the tyre. Oh well. One new tyre later I’m back on the road.

An hour from home the orange light came on, the buzzer sounded, and the words appeared again about low tyre pressure (different tyre)! I laughed in a snorting way ‘God, what are you doing?!’ and took the next exit off the motorway and found another tyre place! This time, this tyre had no problems, and the only suggestion – apart from a faulty sensor – was that I had the wrong tyre pressure in the other tyres and the sensor got tired of trying to cope! 😉 In other words, no one knows, but I’ve had no tyre problems since.

If I didn’t have the sensors I would have eventually discovered that I had a nail in the tyre. Eventually I might have seen the flat tyre. Before that I might have felt the car driving ‘heavily’ or to one side or sounding different. If I didn’t have the sensors, I wouldn’t have stopped the second time but then perhaps I might have exacerbated tyre wear.

We live all of our lives getting feedback – personal, diagnostic, situational, legal, and more – and we learn what feedback to trust, what to follow with the goal of a ‘better’ life – which could be simply getting home safely in as short a time as possible. The feedback itself, may be accurate, or not. If it is from a person, they might have their own agendas.

Living is complicated because it always relies on trust as we learn who we are and as we learn to live in our world with others.

For Christians, there is further feedback about how we’re travelling, how we’re behaving, and who we are and that comes in the form of God’s Word. God’s Law is very much about diagnosis and declarations about our behaviour and attitude and it can also reveal goals by which to live well but it will always be the best sensor to reveal how we are travelling each day. The messages given will be gloomy indeed – the demand to be perfect is always found to be wanting. If this is the only feedback we receive, then many people don’t want anything to do with God – any God – or religion – any religion. However for Christians, there is another message – not feedback for us, so to speak, but a declaration to us, a promise to us – it is more feedback about what Jesus did for us – and Christians hear that they are ‘in Christ’, that they are forgiven, that they have eternal life now already in this world and that trust in these words – the Gospel – makes it possible to receive and understand the feedback the Law gives us. Hearing God’s Word as Law and Gospel is the best way to travel each day!

You can think quite a few thoughts waiting in tyre places! 😉

GS