Follow the Signs!

 

This past Sunday afternoon, on my way to church I was frustrated with traffic.  Not that I haven’t been frustrated for the past year with the I-24/I-75 rebuild.  But this afternoon, unobservant drivers just got onto my last nerve.  For a week, we have had full-sized flatbed trucks with flashing yellow lighted signs warning, “New Traffic Pattern” and “WB I-24 Right Lane”.  So today when the change occurred, there was not one but three of those trucks spaced a mile apart with their warning messages.  You’d think drivers could understand the signs and get the message.  And then there was a big new green interstate sign clearly showing the fork in the road with the “New” traffic pattern clearly labeled.  But countless drivers didn’t get it.  The intersection was backed up for five miles!  I saw a semi stopped in the fork in the road trying to figure out which way to go.  But he was too late.  He had driven past the four signs telling him which way to go and now he was stuck looking at the two roads with a decision to make.  Why can’t these drivers just follow the signs?!  Why don’t they just trust what the signs say, and just do what they say?!  Hey, isn’t that how we are with God?  God tells us in His word the Bible what we have to do to live a happy, peaceful, productive life.  But we just don’t follow God’s directions.  We want to live our lives our way.  We won’t follow God’s warning signs.  And when trouble comes, we can’t figure out which way to go because we have abandoned God.  Job said in his book, Job 5:7, “Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”  Do sparks from a bonfire fly upwards?  Of course!  Are we born for trouble?  Of course!  Job went on to say in Job 28:28, “… Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.”  Well said, Job, well said!  Hey, we need to put that quote in flashing yellow lights on a full-sized flatbed truck.