The Golf Cart

I was walking through the parking lot this morning on the way to my office and saw a golf cart pull into the parking lot. It was the roving patrol guy driving through to check out the cars and people to make sure everything was okay and safe. It is part of his job to make sure there are no problems or threats to our cars and to us. It is just a quiet, and I am sure, boring job, just driving from parking lot to parking lot in this business complex, to see what there is to see. The owners of the complex pay him to do his lonely job for our benefit. I haven't been working in this complex for very long, but have not heard any rumors or stories of car vandalism or other problems with people who do not belong there. He is there to protect us and our cars, just another silent sentinel going about his job.

God has his own silent sentinels who also watch over us and protect us. He has his angels who take care of us. Sometimes it is something that happens directly to someone, like the baby who falls out of a multiple story building and lands on concrete without an injury. Maybe you start to make a turn or drive forward in your car and suddenly pause for some reason, just in time to see another car that would have hit you. Are you tempted to do something you should not do and something or someone else is there which causes you to rethink that action?

God realizes that we don't always listen to those subtle cues, so he may take an indirect route by using someone else to be there at the right time to save us or stop us or make us pause to reconsider what we are about to do. He is not only the supreme being in whose image we were made, he is also our greatest protector. After all, we are his greatest creation and he has a definite vested interest in making sure we are safe so we can eventually spend the rest of eternity with him.

You are probably wondering why bad things happen to either you or someone else if God is there to protect us. Bad things do happen. Sometimes it is just random chance; sometimes it is due to someone else's actions; and sometimes it is just God's way to help us to grow. If you have read many of my prior writings, you know I bring up Job and the trials he went through. God does allow us to be tempted and tried. It is part of his plan to help us grow and develop our spiritual strength. Not only does that serve us, but it puts us in the position of helping and protecting others with what we have learned. In that sense, God uses us to drive his golf cart around on our journey through life. We get to be the ones who watch out for threats to the rest of his people. We get to patrol God's parking lot and make safe those who visit there. We, you and I, get to be God's silent sentinels.