Driving Blind

The other night I was driving home from a friend's birthday party. The weather down in Boulder had been almost balmy. Usually I'd have been driving the trusty Highlander, but Bruce needed it for some hauling errand, so I drove the old car on this evening.
And anyway, the weather was nice, right?
At about nine o'clock I started up the hill, passed Lyons, encountered a little bit of rain. No problem. Traffic was light. I turned on my brights.
Just past Pine Wood, the first snowflakes kissed the wind-shield. The wipers swept them away.
More flakes. And more.
Remember that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark,  that one near the end? Indiana Jones and his girl friend are tied up and forced to watch the bad Nazi guys perform some mumbo-jumbo stuff over the opened ark. These beautiful white angels come up out of the ark. Kind of flowy and feminine. At first, the bad guys exclaim over the beauty of the angels.
Then, the beautiful angel faces morph into faces of death. Spears of white light stab and consume all the bad guys.

That's kid of what those pretty little snowflakes morphed into on my trip up the canyon. One moment: downy soft, crystal prisms, reflecting moonlight and headlights and reflective paint.
Then: Bam! The snowflakes changed attitude and direction. For the next ten miles: an onslaught of millions of horizontal spears, zipping and stabbing at the windshield, as if trying to impale the frightened human just behind the glass.
The wipers arced back and forth wildly, like a warrior trying to deflect an enemy's hail of arrows.
Better believe that I kept a steady jabber of tension-filled prayer directed to the Lord.
I slowed to a crawl. The car slipped, slid, skidded, even skiied at some points.
I wanted to turn back, or even pull over. But there was no guarantee that the snow would stop anytime soon. The white-out was so thorough that I could see no road or driveway or pull-over.
It was keep going or get rammed by some other unfortunate blind driver coming up behind me.
"Oh, Lord, Oh, Lord!"
At Pole Hill, the deadly attack ceased, and I descended into the Estes Valley, unscathed and greatly relieved.
Those four miles down the rest of the way to my home, I thought about how the only thing that kept me on the road was the very occasional glimpse of a rock, or a reflector. . . something that let me know to turn the wheel of to go straight.

Isn't that how our walk with the Lord is? He doesn't always give us the entire view. Sometimes He gives us just enough to keep us going. Certainly not to make us feel comfortable. If we feel comfortable, we stop gazing intently at the road. Our minds wander. We cease looking for signs, for instructions, for warnings. He doesn't explain the entire route, but just what is immediately ahead.

Just like the driver in the snowstorm, we are indeed blind. God provides us with instructions to help us on our journey. One day, we will see clearly. But for now, we rely solely on trusting God that He will warn us of the next deadly curve.Without the aid of the headlights, the wipers, the signs, I wouldn't have made it home.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straights." (Proverbs 3:5,6)