DEVOTION June 26, 2019
28/06/19 14:08
Greetings!
The sainted husband bought a new car….. First real new car we have had - I can only think of one other really new car we have had over the last 40 some years and that car was a necessity because we needed a car whee there was plenty of room between the back seat and the back of the front seat! We had two children (I wish we could say we had two children in car seats but when my two oldest children were babes and toddlers car seats were a luxury item that few people had. Those of you who had little children during these years probably can relate to the ‘unsafe’ ways in which we ferried little ones around!)
Anyway, we had a small compact car - a Chevy Nova (not the big muscle car version of the Chevy Nova but the later model which had turned into a small, very small, family type car). We did have a friend with the fast moving sporty Chevy Nova but while that would have been nice that just didn’t seem practical with two small ones…..
But it is true that small ones grow and we didn’t quite take that into consideration when we decided to take a family vacation and travel the journey from WV to Colorado to visit the sainted husband’s brother and his wife and of course to see the sights along the way in the small little Chevy Nova. However, the sainted husband took off the halo during this trip because he went into ‘gotta get there’ mode and the sight seeing trip became a few and far between sight seeing trip.
We thought we were well prepared for a trip of that magnitude with two toddlers. We had snacks and books and (remember this was a whole bunch of years ago before tablets and internet and movie screens in the cars) I thought I had scored big time when I found a package which had a cassette player, books, headphones and an audio recording of those books on a cassette tape. Bam! A way to keep two toddlers occupied as we zoomed across the country….
And yes, for a good majority of the trip the cassette player/cassette tape/book/headphones entertainment system worked very well. Of course there were the few squabbles about who would liste to which book at what time and the inevitable "She's touching me" moments but not bad considering..... But what we did underestimate was the size of the car and the amount of space between the back of the front seat and the feet of the toddlers. Now toddlers aren’t very big and we had two pretty small children size wise and you would think there would be enough room for two tiny toddlers to sit on the back seat and not disturb the parents in the front seats…..
My husband has really long legs - I on the other hand have pretty short legs so we very carefully positioned the children so the one with the longest legs - the elder, the son - would sit behind the short legged me and the younger, the daughter - would sit behind the long legged husband. We thought we had the thumbs up for smart parenting - right positions in the car, snacks, entertainment…..
But we did not take into account wiggly children in the small car….. entertained children will sit still won’t they? Ha! you say - parent fail. Even entertained children wiggle and entertained children strapped into seatbelts (yes even in the stone ages without car seats we did have seat belts!) only have certain parts of their bodies that can move freely - legs and feet. So the entertained children spent most of the trip very well absorbed into their cassette player/cassette tape/book/headphones entertainment system - and kicking their legs.
Which meant that in this small car the kicking legs and feet connected on the back of the seats of the parents in the front seat over and over and over and over...... We took their shoes off… we stopped the car once and had a discussion…. And it wasn’t long until the “Quick kicking the seats!” became a futile endeavor - admittedly I gave up long before the haloless sainted husband but eventually it did happen and he drove a lot leaving forward so his back wasn’t against the pummeled car seat!
It was a long trip in more ways than one.
How many times has God tried to get you to listen? How many times has God tried to lead you to ways that are more productive in your life? How many times has God stopped the car and had a ‘discussion’ with you?
How many times have you paid attention to God’s message to you? Or are we just like children with headphones absorbed in something else and disinterested in what is going on around us; disinterested in what God is trying to tell us? Figuring we can just keep on doing whatever it is that God knows is not good for us, or good for those around us, or that we need to do for God or for ourselves or those around us….
Being a follower of God doesn’t mean we can just go along our merry way and do whatever we want…. being a follower of God brings with it responsibility and God’s call to us to pay attention to the one who created us, to the one who loves us, to the one who knows what is best, to the one who chose us to help do the work needed to be done. We can only do that work if we listen..
So quit kicking the back of the car seat and listen to the word of your God for you!
Amen!
The sainted husband bought a new car….. First real new car we have had - I can only think of one other really new car we have had over the last 40 some years and that car was a necessity because we needed a car whee there was plenty of room between the back seat and the back of the front seat! We had two children (I wish we could say we had two children in car seats but when my two oldest children were babes and toddlers car seats were a luxury item that few people had. Those of you who had little children during these years probably can relate to the ‘unsafe’ ways in which we ferried little ones around!)
Anyway, we had a small compact car - a Chevy Nova (not the big muscle car version of the Chevy Nova but the later model which had turned into a small, very small, family type car). We did have a friend with the fast moving sporty Chevy Nova but while that would have been nice that just didn’t seem practical with two small ones…..
But it is true that small ones grow and we didn’t quite take that into consideration when we decided to take a family vacation and travel the journey from WV to Colorado to visit the sainted husband’s brother and his wife and of course to see the sights along the way in the small little Chevy Nova. However, the sainted husband took off the halo during this trip because he went into ‘gotta get there’ mode and the sight seeing trip became a few and far between sight seeing trip.
We thought we were well prepared for a trip of that magnitude with two toddlers. We had snacks and books and (remember this was a whole bunch of years ago before tablets and internet and movie screens in the cars) I thought I had scored big time when I found a package which had a cassette player, books, headphones and an audio recording of those books on a cassette tape. Bam! A way to keep two toddlers occupied as we zoomed across the country….
And yes, for a good majority of the trip the cassette player/cassette tape/book/headphones entertainment system worked very well. Of course there were the few squabbles about who would liste to which book at what time and the inevitable "She's touching me" moments but not bad considering..... But what we did underestimate was the size of the car and the amount of space between the back of the front seat and the feet of the toddlers. Now toddlers aren’t very big and we had two pretty small children size wise and you would think there would be enough room for two tiny toddlers to sit on the back seat and not disturb the parents in the front seats…..
My husband has really long legs - I on the other hand have pretty short legs so we very carefully positioned the children so the one with the longest legs - the elder, the son - would sit behind the short legged me and the younger, the daughter - would sit behind the long legged husband. We thought we had the thumbs up for smart parenting - right positions in the car, snacks, entertainment…..
But we did not take into account wiggly children in the small car….. entertained children will sit still won’t they? Ha! you say - parent fail. Even entertained children wiggle and entertained children strapped into seatbelts (yes even in the stone ages without car seats we did have seat belts!) only have certain parts of their bodies that can move freely - legs and feet. So the entertained children spent most of the trip very well absorbed into their cassette player/cassette tape/book/headphones entertainment system - and kicking their legs.
Which meant that in this small car the kicking legs and feet connected on the back of the seats of the parents in the front seat over and over and over and over...... We took their shoes off… we stopped the car once and had a discussion…. And it wasn’t long until the “Quick kicking the seats!” became a futile endeavor - admittedly I gave up long before the haloless sainted husband but eventually it did happen and he drove a lot leaving forward so his back wasn’t against the pummeled car seat!
It was a long trip in more ways than one.
How many times has God tried to get you to listen? How many times has God tried to lead you to ways that are more productive in your life? How many times has God stopped the car and had a ‘discussion’ with you?
How many times have you paid attention to God’s message to you? Or are we just like children with headphones absorbed in something else and disinterested in what is going on around us; disinterested in what God is trying to tell us? Figuring we can just keep on doing whatever it is that God knows is not good for us, or good for those around us, or that we need to do for God or for ourselves or those around us….
Being a follower of God doesn’t mean we can just go along our merry way and do whatever we want…. being a follower of God brings with it responsibility and God’s call to us to pay attention to the one who created us, to the one who loves us, to the one who knows what is best, to the one who chose us to help do the work needed to be done. We can only do that work if we listen..
So quit kicking the back of the car seat and listen to the word of your God for you!
Amen!