Stop Signs

Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: "Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!"? Such regulations…lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
-Colossians 2:20-21, 23

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, 
but to save the world through him.

-John 3:17

A few days ago I rolled through a four-way stop sign. It waits patiently outside our city to host the occasional car. I’d carefully scanned all directions: no cars, no pedestrians, no bikes. I slowed and curved gently to my right.

“STO-OP!!!!” an exasperated screech jolted my senses. I braked, fearing unforeseen danger. It took me several seconds to realize that the yell had escaped from a letter-of-the-law farmer walking in a nearby field. Shaken, yet in no danger, I cautiously resumed my homeward commute.

The farmer’s yell bugged me. I felt frustrated and condemned. I had clearly fulfilled the stop sign’s goal of careful driving, yet my host of mental Pharisees demanded that I had done wrong.

Those Pharisees often screech STOP! at my soul. Afraid of crossing the letter, I shrink from the spirit of God’s law. It is easier to finish the grading I promised to hand back tomorrow than to care for broken-hearted student in front of me, easier to walk away from my aching Christian brother than to risk being seen as “indiscreet,” easier to fully stop at the sign than to continually be aware of traffic around me.

Satan is the accuser of the brethren, constantly replaying the rolling stops of our lives as evidence of our failings. Jesus, on the other hand, joyfully and flagrantly healed on the Sabbath.

It’s time to root out the red octagons in my life and plant yielded triangles.