Riding with my father

I was driving to work this morning and my father was riding in the car with me. I had decided to bring my lunch with me today and placed the plastic container on the back seat. When I say plastic container, I mean one of those you can buy at the grocery store in a pack of 2 or 4 next to the sandwich bags and the foil roils. We are not talking about anything you would burp and certainly not something you could turn upside down and expect to hold all of the contents without leaking. To make matters even more fun, it was full of spaghetti and meat sauce.

During the drive in, the driver in front of me could not quite decide whether or not he wanted to go into the turn lane or come back into the lane I was in. Fortunately, my father prompted me to pay attention to that drivers moves and I was able to respond to the driver’s indecisive moves. I did not have to slam on the breaks or squeal to a stop, but I did need to hit the brakes suddenly to ensure that driver had the room to do what he needed to do. I don’t know if it was the idea of my father being in the car with me or not, or I had actually matured enough (probably the former), but I honked my horn without emotion as an indicator that I was there and did not respond in any negative way. I didn’t even mutter anything under my breath. Even though the sudden breaking was not extreme or violent, it was enough to shift around the contents of my car, specifically the papers and container I placed on my back seat.

Now I know what you may be thinking. Spaghetti loaded plastic container sitting behind the driver side on the back seat of the car that had just hit the brakes. I would have thought the same thing: Pasta toupee with meat sauce, right? At the very least, I would have thought that the back floor of my car would smell like Prego for months. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even think of the container of spaghetti until I had gotten to work and was getting my stuff out of the car. To my amazement, instead of one of the possible scenarios above, the container had slid and remained upright on top of my computer bag. I was able to lift up the clean, well kept box and carry it inside. Apparently, my father had seen what could have happened and reached over to guide the path of the container while it passed off of the seat and onto my bag.

And why not?

My father might not have known about the falling container, or had seen it happening but had thought that perhaps other things were more important to take care of than reaching for leftover spaghetti. But, no. In order to spare me the frustration and work of the clean up, and the cost of something different for lunch, my father took advantage of such a little, almost insignificant in the world’s economy, thing. It certainly was not as important as being kept from what could have happened had I not been made wary of the other driver and the crash that might have taken place. If I had to chose one or the other, I would have certainly chosen to be accident free cleaning up pasta. The great thing was I didn’t have to choose. My father was big enough and aware enough to take care of both things for me, without having to explicit ask. He simply loves me more than I give him credit. And he is certainly more capable than I give him credit.

What about it? What about your Father?

Is your Father big enough to handle more than one thing at a time? Is He only able to handle the bigger more important things because He doesn’t have time to get around to the smaller things? You know, the things we don’t give over because they’re not important enough and certainly don’t compare to some of the things other people are needing help with. [We certainly don’t want to take up God’s precious time because He only has so many hours in a day…. ]

Is your Father all powerful? Is that really what you think and believe? Is that really how you act? Do your spouse or your kids know that you believe that in your words or actions? I wish I could say that was the case for me and one day (sooner rather than later) I pray that is the case.

God’s Word says that He is all powerful (Omnipotent), all present (Omnipresent), and all knowing (Omniscient). All. Not partial, not mostly, not almost all.

If He indeed is all powerful, everywhere at the same time, and knows everything, then where is your Father’s limitations?

The answer would be have to do more with our view of God than who God really is.



Acts 1:24, John 18:4, John 13:19, John 21:17, Matthew 11:27