Call A Tow Truck!

Yesterday morning I took my truck to work. Four inches of snow had dropped on our area overnight and the roads were going to be slippery. I was glad I stopped at Walmart the day before and got a tow rope too. Now that I had a big truck with four-wheel drive I could actually pull someone out of the ditch if I wanted to! How prophetic of me. And sad at the same time.

Guess what? Half way into town I saw a car in the ditch - a little Subaru. I slowed down and looked more closely at it. The car looked like one a friend of mine owned! I began looking for a place to turn around. Then I saw the lights - a tow truck perhaps - heading for the accident scene. "They've got this," I thought. Then I noticed the flashing lights belonged to an ambulance, not a tow truck.

Uh-oh. I began to pray.

As I continued on my way to work I began to think about my reaction and my emotions about what I had just seen. The sequence.

My first thought was about something I could do. I had a tow rope. I could help someone! How interesting, I thought, that I had purchased the tow rope just the day before I could have actually used it.

I had a certain level of concern for the driver of the car but when I thought that the driver could have actually been a friend - someone I actually knew - my thoughts changed. My concern deepened. And I guess that bothered me a little. Shouldn't I feel the same concern for ALL people?

That's a tough one. I think the concern I felt was the same, but perhaps it was the sense of friend in trouble that made my concern deepen.

We humans are a strange species. Some of us don't care at all. Others care enough to stop. Would I really have been in the way? Should I have stopped? I think I did the right thing by not stopping. I think what matters in God's eyes is our desire.

I contacted my friend later in the day. It turned out the driver of the car in the ditch was not her. We were both grateful for that. But I wonder it isn't me who needs a tow truck in my spiritual life.

God is interested in the condition of our heart. When I first saw that car in the ditch my first thoughts were about me and what I could do. My first thought should have been about the person in the car and what God could do. "He must become greater, I must become less" (John 3:30)

When God sent Samuel to Bethlehem to find a king, we learn an interesting thing about God and what He looks for in each of us..

^"6 So it was, when they came, that he looked at Eliab and said, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is before Him!”

⁷ But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” - 1 Samuel 16:6-7

God Looks At The Heart - Love City TV