Dream Car

5 years, that’s it.  That’s all-the-longer I need my car to last… only 5 years.  Then I can trade it in for the car of my dreams.  It’s not that I don’t like my current car, or that I get teased incessantly for driving an easter egg colored box, or a 4 cylinder “girl car” by my friends.  (I still maintain that it’s actually “military green,” if such a color exists.)  It has nothing to do with me being unsatisfied with my current car at all.  It has everything to do with my dream car.

Ford has announced that they are targeting 2021 for production of driverless cars.  That’s right- cars that drive themselves.  They aren’t just cartoons anymore.  This is where dreams come true!

I’ve done the calculations.  My current car says that I drive an average speed of 37 miles per hour.  If I drive about 20k miles a year I’m spending 540 hours a year driving my car.  Could you imagine what I could do with that time?  I could actually sleep!  I’m giddy with the thought!

There would be no 4-year-old waking me up at 3am because “her covers are too wrinkly;” no little girls knocking on my door in the middle of the night to ask me if bats are blind; no spouse to steal my covers and give me 6 inches of sleeping space on the edge of the mattress.

Driverless cars can, very literally, make my dreams come true!  My oldest daughter is 12.  I haven’t dreamed in 12 years and 9 months.  (11 years since I started being a father and 9 months for the time Carol needed the extra 6 inches of sleeping space.)  Come to me, driverless cars!  Come to Papa!  Hallelujah and amen!

Of course, there are a few minor complications… First, auto manufacturers want to make driverless cars without a steering wheel, which means that I’d have to give up all control.  Second, people have died in the Tesla prototypes… but I want a Ford… so… anyway… on to complication #1.

I watched a video of a woman sitting behind the wheel of a driverless car for the first time.  For the most part, she screamed through the entire video.  Who can blame her?  She had no control of the vehicle!

In the Christian faith believers are always given a choice.  Will we follow the path God calls us to follow or will we maintain complete control and go down a path of our own making?  “Getting into the car” isn’t easy.  It’s a bit nerve racking.  It makes some people want to scream, but it has been my experience that this is where dreams really come true.  God proves himself over and over again each time we decide to let Him lead.  At every turn something more amazing and more glorious takes place.

Here’s my challenge: step into the car… not a “military green,” 4-cylinder, beast-of-a-man car that you can control completely on your own, but rather the one God navigates.  Give Him the ability to direct.  Then watch, as He proves Himself to you.

Pastor Travis Montgomery