I was driving a couple of days ago when I came across, nearly literally, a turtle crossing the road. This is not a joke with a punchline. I actually saw a turtle crossing the road. Verrrrrrryyyyyyyy slowly.
I drove by him, he being in the other lane, and I observed him moving legs and head sticking out as he headed toward my lane. Did I mention it was Verrrrrrrryyyyyy slowly?
I hope he made it. He might have. He could have.
Since then I've thought about how that turtle must see us as we whizz by him or we whizz over him. What fear he must have knowing that he can't possibly move quickly enough to make it without someone helping him, someone much, much greater than himself. If someone wants that turtle dead, that turtle is dead. If someone wants to stop and help, as I should have if I could have figured out how to, then he is helped.
The turtle lives a life completely helplessly.
Does the metaphor need to be explained.
We are no different. God is to us as we are to the turtle. He looks down and sees our crawl through life, every bit as slowly as we watch those turtles cross the road. He helps, he pushes, he watches over. But he does not often stop us from heading out into that road.
After doing two funerals in five days, I've had time to ponder these things and what I see is we are all heading across those roads, and sometimes the cars strike and sometimes they do not. It isn't random, though. There is a plan. Somehow we were helped along the path that took us to that road that determines so many things. We had the choice to stay in the ditch beside the road. But somehow we decided there was more to our world and we risked everything to see it.
That's life. Really.
By the way, why did the turtle cross the road? To get to the Shell Station. (That, just in case you didn't know, was a turtle crossing the road joke).
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