Stop And Go

It is a scene with which we are all familiar. You are driving to a destination and the traffic is flowing along smoothly. Not only will you arrive on time, but you will be even a few minutes early. You are relaxed and in a good mood. Suddenly you notice the traffic is slowing down, then slowing down some more. Within a short distance, you and all of your fellow drivers are at a complete stop. After a short pause, you start forward again...for two car lengths. It is a traffic jam and you are in stop-and-go hell. Your relaxed journey has now devolved into creep, crawl, and stop. Your planned arrival time is rapidly disappearing. As the wait gets longer, your patience gets shorter. Whatever your goal, whether it is work, home, shopping, a hot date, or something else, it is not going according to your plan.

As I said before, this is something we have all experienced at one time or another. In today's world of go-go-go, anything which slows us or stops us is to be avoided if at all possible. After all, how can we accomplish what we have set out to do if something else slows us down or stops us? It doesn't matter whether or not it is in our control, does it?

We are constantly being told to take time out for ourselves, for our spouses, or children, even God. Even God? Don't you take time for him on most Sunday mornings? Sometimes you even go to an additional service on Sunday or Wednesday evening. Of course, there is that 30 second mechanical prayer before you eat. That must count for something, right?

Have you ever been doing something and just had the urge to stop for a few minutes to pray? Nothing special or formal, just a brief pause in the action to have a chat with him. Did you listen or did you ignore it because you had something more important to do? Many times when I am driving someplace and am ahead of schedule, I get the idea I should stop at a church for a few minutes to have just a brief talk. The denomination of the church doesn't matter, I am welcome anyway. I have been directed to one church or another, sometimes passing one in favor of another. I don't know why this is so, but I have found that the five or ten minutes I spend refreshes me or calms whatever maybe bothering me at the moment. There is nothing like being able to ask God to carry the load for you or give you the help or answer you haven't found by yourself. Just think of it as a spiritual "stop and go".

In this hurry-up, take-no-prisoners world in which we live and work, we all hate to be delayed by the traditional stop and go. But sometimes, we need to take time out to do a spiritual stop and go to talk to God. Why don’t you try it sometime?