Blog

On Mission to Apply the Truth of God’s Word to Life

Car Lines and Left Turns

Car lines are such a joy aren’t they? For the uninitiated, the process of dropping your child off at school can become quite a harrowing experience. Van Buren seems to be a quiet town until 7:20 AM on a weekday morning. During the hour before school you begin to wonder where you are. One day recently, as I pulled in to drop off one of my children, I noticed the car at the front of the line to exit the school grounds had a left turn signal activated. Ironically, the sign next to the vehicle read: “No left turn 7:30-8:00.” As I pulled to the back of the school campus toward the drop off point, the cars continued to pile up behind one guy who was determined to turn left. My kid got out of the car and I pulled around for my turn to wait for the guy at the front to turn left illegally. As I sat there waiting I began to get irritated. I was provoked to annoyance. Just make a right turn dude! Five minutes later traffic parted and the guy did turn left. Obviously this wasn’t a major provocation and certainly not something worth much more than a few grumbles but it does relate to something in the Bible.

My family had a fun discussion the other day of this verse from Hebrews 10:24: “And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.” Out of the gate my kids questioned the word “stimulate." My explanation helped very little. I said, “It means the same thing as provoke.” I made the mistake of taking the typical usage of the word provoke as an example. “You know how your brother always makes you mad?” I said, "That’s kind of like what the Bible is talking about here but in a good way.” The kids were even more confused. “Dad, how can I provoke someone in a good way?”

Not to be deterred, I told my kids about the word itself. Our English word paroxysm comes from this word “provoke.” I told them it carries the idea of stimulating a nerve. I used the example from a doctor's visit in which they test reflexes. The doctor takes the reflex hammer and “provokes” a specific tendon of the body to gauge whether the response is normal or not. I explained that the word describes something like this.

Believers in Jesus Christ have a responsibility toward one another to provoke positive motion in others. We should be looking for ways we can move fellow believers toward Christ-like behavior. Towards love. A great deal of the apathy among Christians today is due to the fact that we don’t realize we have any responsibility toward fellow believers. Or if we do think we have responsibility we think it is to provoke people in a negative sense. So who can you encourage today in Christ? Who can you inspire to action today?

Oh, and one final thing about being provoked--we tend to remember it, positive or negative. Apparently, I’m still not over the left turn guy because I had to write about it here. So, left turn guy, forgive me for being irritated at you. But if we remember the negative, we will certainly remember the people who challenged us to grow and inspired us to move forward in our walk with Christ! How can you lead someone else to do that today?

Subscribe below to receive the blog in your email: