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Los Angeles, CA 90053   

BLIND SPOTS #4

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SNOW FLURRIES

There’s a humorous little story skidding around on the Internet — and I think it maybe started in the Reader’s Digest – about a lady who was stuck driving in a snowstorm late one night. Speaking of blind spots, which has been our Bible topic this week, the whole universe had just gone blizzard-white on her. Visibility was about four feet in front of her car. She literally couldn’t see a thing.

Then she remembered something her daddy had told her once. “If you’re trapped in snow flurries, the safest vehicle to follow is a snowplow.” And what do you know? There was one straight ahead of her, dutifully chugging along and pushing snow to the side.

“Great!” she thought. “I’ll just follow this guy to safety. With his snow-studded, industrial-strength tires, he’s sure to make it to civilization. Plus, if I stay right behind him, I’ll be driving in his just-cleared pathway. Perfect!” So she did. For several grueling miles, she just dug in behind this guy, turning when he turned — right, left, this way, that way — following where he led, using him to see ahead into what was for her a mammoth blind spot. And her plan was working just great, although the road did seem to be more windy and turning here and there than she remembered. But she stuck with it.

All at once, the snowplow stopped dead in its tracks. “Oh dear,” she thought. “Now what? Is he lost too?” And the driver, getting out, wearing his big yellow all-weather suit, lumbered over to her window. She rolled it down and he poked his head in close to hers, snowflakes sticking to his mustache and eyebrows. “Lady,” he said, “what are you doing?”

And she explained. “My daddy said if I ever got lost in a snowstorm, I should just get behind a snowplow and follow it no matter what.”

The guy thought about this for a minute and then said, “Well, okay, I guess. That suits me if it suits you.” Then he told her, “I just finished clearing off the Safeway parking lot and now I’m heading over to Wal-Mart.”

Well, friend, here in sunny Simi Valley, California, where, even as you’re hearing this, the weather is probably 84 degrees, we accept these stories as being true even though we’ve never seen evidence that this white stuff you call snow actually exists. But there in the Wal-Mart parking lot, there’s really a pretty decent spiritual prescription for us. Here it is. If you have a blind spot in your life — and you know you have a blind spot — then it’s not a bad idea to get into a caravan, where someone else can help chart a good path. Does that make sense?

It’s been our topic all this week that even good Christians can struggle with unanticipated snow storms. We don’t have a perfect picture of our moral surroundings. Over in the book of Jeremiah, the prophet of God laments about it:

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.” “Desperately wicked,” says the King James. “Who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.”

So if our hearts are muddled and wrong, misunderstanding God’s will for us, then it makes sense to seek help. Now, everyone else around us has some of the same problems, but there is such a thing in the Christian life as a person who drives a snowplow. A good born-again pastor can help you chart a path through the snow drifts ahead. A small-group fellowship that meets in someone’s home once a week is a marvelous way to lean on others for navigational assistance. A college friend you correspond with weekly, either the old-fashioned stamp-on-a-letter way, or now with the Internet, can help. But when the path ahead isn’t clear, and especially when, because of our own genetic makeup, we can’t see what our friends CAN see, then it’s a good idea to swing into line in a caravan and drive with others through the snow and rain to the New Jerusalem. No wonder the Bible advises us strongly, in the book of Hebrews, chapter 10, to get into a spiritual carpool and stay there. I love how this encouragement reads in The Message paraphrase by Eugene Peterson:

“Let’s keep a firm grip,” he writes, “on the promises that keep us going. [God] always keeps His word. Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging and helping out, NOT avoiding worshiping TOGETHER as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching.”

That’s a much-different tone from the King James’ familiar line, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together,” but friend, it’s the exact same concept. And of course, if driving conditions are terrible and the sleet is pounding your windshield, but it’s only five more miles to the beautiful resort where all is peace and joy and the sea is made of glass, that’s for sure when you’re going to stay with the caravan and have your flashers going. That’s when you need the help more than ever, as you “see the Day approaching.”

There was a story in a Christian magazine not long ago about how pastors sometimes really struggle with an addiction to pornography. It’s always been a Playboy-and-Penthouse problem, but now with our high-speed modems, and the color screens on our laptops, the “Three A’s” of Internet porn are just a deadly temptation: “Accessibility, Affordability, Anonymity.” And this article advised men who flounder and skid into the ditch to immediately get into a group. Make yourself accountable. Have a good friend who will ask you, eyeball-to-eyeball, at least once a week, these two questions: “One, did you view pornography this past week? And two, did you just lie to me?” Now, maybe someone who fudges on one will fudge on two as well; I don’t know. But the point is to turn over your blind spot to a friend who can see. Deliberately put yourself into a caravan where someone else will say, “Hey, man, are your mirrors adjusted? Are you looking over to the right? And are you carefully NOT looking into the glare of that X-rated sin over on the left?”

It’s kind of fun to find parallels between the blind spots out on the Ventura Freeway and those on the twisting mountain road up to Paradise. We mentioned yesterday that there are certainly ways God’s people can essentially “adjust their mirrors” in spiritual driving. Is it also true that dirty windows can create a blind spot? There’s a verse in II Corinthians, chapter 7, that seems to imply so. Listen:

“Since we have these promises, dear friends,” Paul writes, “let us purify ourselves from everything that CONTAMINATES body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.”

We can all think of other people — and yes, maybe we can look into our own hearts right here — and think of times where just plain sin in our lives gave us dirty spiritual windows. Something was wrong . . . and we couldn’t see it. Talk about a vicious circle, what C. S. Lewis calls the “compound interest” effect of sin. Sin A blinds us to the fact that Sin B IS a sin, and soon we’re up to C, D, E, and F.

We can also have a “dirty window” experience by simply not picking up that bottle of Windex otherwise known as the Holy Bible. We often like to quote here from a book entitled The Victorious Christian Life, and author Tony Evans puts it just that succinctly:

“Dusty Bibles mean dirty lives.”

And we think here specifically of the kinds of spiritual blind spots that happen because the windows ARE dirty. We can’t see upcoming hazards because we haven’t read the warnings in God’s own Word. Evans goes on to give us a clever little sports metaphor:

“Having the right things in your mind will not automatically guarantee that you will follow them,” he admits. “But one thing is for sure. You will not do what is right if you are not AWARE of what is right. Any football player can run into the end zone, but only the one with the ball is capable of scoring.”

Well, friend, the fact that your radio is on right this very moment, this Thursday, shows that you care about blind spots. And I appreciate that. You’re into the Word of God with us, and I hope you’re into it right there in your prayer closet, and with a small group, and at your church. Even here in Simi Valley, where the worst weather hazard we ever have is a spot of early-morning fog, it’s such a comfort to know that we don’t have to make the long drive home all by ourselves.