“One home phone only, in this day, and age, is pretty barbaric,” Ed my old neighbour from Saskatchewan informed me yesterday. According to Ed, I should have known better than to travel in my car without having a cell phone. Being stuck beside the No. 1 Highway while the traffic flew by at 110 miles per hour and more, sure had us feeling left behind and lonely.
My old neighbour wanted to make sure that I understand being stranded was my fault. He claimed I should have been stuck or stranded enough times before, to make sure it didn’t happen again. I admitted to Ed that a cell phone would have ensured a much quicker rescue, and that cell phones are worth having when you need them.
Next, Ed made sure that I knew my car was getting obsolete, being a 2010 model, as he felt it was surely ready to be traded or scrapped. For my old neighbour, any vehicle more than three years old is an antique. I told Ed that even new cars do break down and that folks with cell phones do get stranded in places where their cell phones will not work.
None of us wants to get stuck or stranded when driving or when living our lives. One thing about being stranded is that it happens to everyone more than once. Getting stranded now and then can help us see how we need to change direction or actions.
Ed believes getting stranded should result in a quick fix. Personally, I think some of us had to get stranded in debt before we learned how to spend our money more wisely. How long one is stranded in debt or other life situations is not just about our efforts but other factors beyond our control. If one has run out of gas in the middle of the night, they may be stranded until the gas station is open in the morning.
In a spiritual sense, it is easier to think and say things than it is to do them. Jesus understood that saying the right things, like reciting the commandments, is not the same thing as obeying them in thought, word and deed. People often get stranded in saying one thing but doing another. Paul said in Romans, “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this, I keep on doing.”
Paul needed a rescue from being stranded in God’s law. He wanted to keep God’s commandments, but he was unable to keep God’s laws fully and faithfully. In his frustration and inability to keep the commandments, he turned to Jesus who was the only one able to keep the laws perfectly. Jesus rescues the stranded in sin and sets them free.
