Many people on our island navigate our various roadways on golf carts, enjoying a more leisurely journey whenever we go out and about. Given the unhurried pace of life here, and the natural beauty that surrounds us, these vehicles are a practical and memorable part of everyday life here. Yet these vehicles do have certain drawbacks. They don’t go very fast, so if you find yourself in a hurry, you might just miss the boat. Many of them are far from waterproof or weatherproof, so you may get wet during a summer thunderstorm or quite cold when winter weather appears. And most of the windshields are plastic, which can become problematic regarding visibility.
Car windshields are made with durable glass, with windshield wipers able to gently sweep off water and dirt from the surface to give the driver a clear view of the road ahead. Golf carts typically don’t come with windshield wipers, so drivers will frantically wipe off the exterior surface with whatever towel is handy. Unfortunately, plastic windshields are nowhere near as durable as glass, so the dust that accompanies our dirt roads winds up getting onto the windshield surface and the towel that wipes them, and the attempt to clear the view results in tiny abrasions on the windshield surface. Under the right lighting conditions, those abrasions are essentially imperceptible. However, when the light hits those scratches and imperfections just right, a windshield that seemed transparent one moment suddenly becomes this translucent wall that blinds the driver.
Many of us are going through life scarred by innumerable abrasions of various sizes that are the result of living in the real world, where difficulties are simply the price of continuing to breathe. Some are certainly better at wiping away the stuff that gets on us – the things that would completely obscure our view. However, it is easy to not see the accumulation of scratches that gradually compromise the clarity of our vision. So long as we are heading in the right direction under the right conditions, we can see clearly enough to keep going at our preferred speed.
Unfortunately, there’s the possibility that suddenly we’re in a situation where everything changes, and the cumulative effect of those smaller annoyances are magnified to the point of completely disrupting our senses. It isn’t the fault of the situation, and it isn’t the fault of any one of those abrasions. It just means that, when all of the pieces fall together in the perfectly wrong way, we can crumble. There might be some warning signs, or we might be oblivious to it, but the simple fact is that we are going down the road smoothly one moment, and the next we are in a ditch.
We would all do well to inspect our windshields of life and see if there are signs of accumulating damage that we might possibly be able to rectify. And we should also understand that if life suddenly knocked us off the road, one thing that we would likely appreciate is if someone else stopped to see if we needed help getting back on track. You might even say that it was how we could love our neighbors as ourselves.
Peace and blessings – Pastor Aaron