Tag: Speeding ticket

Just Call Me Mrs. Lead-Foot

Last week I got to chat with a Colorado police officer after seeing his swirling blue lights in my rear-view mirror.  He clocked me going 50mph in a 35.  The worst part? I could see the 65mph sign just a little further down the road.  

I could blame the rental car company because they set ‘set me up’ with a 2022 cherry red Ford Mustang.  I could blame this little Colorado town because it felt like a speed trap.  I could even blame the police department, since it was the end of the month and I’m wondering if quotas were being made.  

The reality was I was in the wrong. I was speeding.  It was me. Not the car and certainly not the rental agency, the speed trap, or a potential quota.

It’s easy to blame someone else when we’re in the wrong with a traffic infraction.  The same is true with sin.  We can justify sinful behavior in ourselves, when in reality we’re really in the wrong.  

In the speeding ticket scenario, I was wrong…and likely I deserve way more speeding tickets than I actually receive.  Why? Because I’m not caught by a cop every time I speed.  

Yet, God sees every sin.  Every day.  And the reality is that we are essentially “caught” each time. 

Isaiah 1:1-8 tells us about how God sees the persistence of sinful people rebelling against Him.  The Bible also discusses how God acknowledges that we are a broken people who may be generally good at heart, but must be rejected because of our sinful nature.  Several chapters to the right we find that the New Testament offers us salvation through Christ on the cross.  Our sinful nature should get us immediately rejected.  Instead it is forgiven when we accept Jesus as our Savior.  

Sin is sin to our Father.  But sin is forgiven by the act of Christ’s crucifixion and our acceptance of that gift.  

While we deserve the flashing lights and issued ticket for each and every one of our sins, God has provided a path towards salvation through grace to cover each of those infractions. 

~Emily

Speeding Tickets of Life

Over the weekend, a police officer handed me a ticket for doing 80-mph in a 70-mph zone.  As I pulled away, tears started dripping down my face.  My son, who had been fascinated by the flashing blue lights and had waved with a smile to the 2nd officer that was standing near the back-seat window, was now concerned about my water works.

“Are you sad you got a ticket mama?”

When I answered no to being sad, he continued trying to guess the cause of my tears.  

My tears were ones of frustration. I had a lot on my plate.  I was exhausted, having already driven 9 of the 14.5 hours in order to get home.  It was starting to snow, causing me another level of worry about driving. My husband was another week behind coming home.  Baseball tryouts were being re-scheduled for Monday evening and new cleats/bats/gloves hadn’t been purchased yet.  Laundry and bills to be paid were waiting my arrival home.  

Now, I also had a speeding ticket.  

As I started to search vigilantly for a hotel to stop at, I began reflecting on what that speeding ticket meant.  It became symbolic.  I speed a lot.  If I’m honest and fair, I likely speed every day.  It’s easy for me to nudge up to the speed limit, as well as go over…even if it’s only one or two mph over. 

The kicker is that I don’t get caught every day.  I don’t catch myself, nor does law enforcement. Yet, I know I speed. I know I should try harder to stop speeding. I acknowledge that I deserve the accountability and discipline of a ticket nearly daily.

Sin is like that.  

We often commit sin without even acknowledging that it’s sinful behavior.  Perhaps, we exhibit a particular sinful behavior so frequently that we begin to lose the knowledge that it’s sin. We can go days, months, and even years without being held accountable for those behaviors.  Romans 3:23 states, “…for all of sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”  The longer we go without being called out on it, the easier it is to continue doing the behavior.  

Like speeding. 

This was the 1st speeding ticket I had gotten in the US since 1996; although I did get enough speeding tickets while stationed in Germany, that I actually had my US-European drivers licenses suspended for 30 days (it’s even easier to go super-fast in Germany).   

But this weekend’s speeding ticket was a reprimand for errant behavior.  It was also representative of all the other times I had broken the law by speeding…and hadn’t gotten caught.  

I deserved the ticket.  The tears weren’t ones of sadness that I had gotten caught; rather they were ones of frustration at the situation.

Take a moment this week to ask the Lord to reveal where there is repeated sin in your life so that you can repent before you end up with one of the speeding tickets of life.

~Emily