Overheated Brakes

Deut 12:8-10 (MSG) - Don't continue doing things the way we're doing them at present, each of us doing as we wish. Until now you haven't arrived at the goal, the resting place, the inheritance that God, your God, is giving you. But the minute you cross the Jordan River and settle into the land God, your God, is enabling you to inherit, he'll give you rest from all your surrounding enemies. You'll be able to settle down and live in safety.


When I was about eight years old, we took a family vacation I will never forget. My parents and our aunt and uncle took us on a waterskiing trip to Shaver Lake, over 5,000 feet high, in the High Sierra Mountains above Fresno. Rt 168 snaked 50 miles up the steep Sierra mountains to the lake, then snaked back down to the Fresno valley. There was one way up, and one way down. This steep, thin road was full of twists and turns, and there were no side roads for dozens of miles. There were, however, a number of small turnoffs for vehicles who needed to pull over for any reason. Many of you may be too young to remember overheating brakes, but cars on Rt 168 frequently used the turnoffs for cooling their brakes.

But Rt 168 wasn't just for automobile traffic. This tiny road was also the single route into and out of the mountain forests, so it was also used by lumber trucks, carrying freshly-felled redwoods and cedars. These trucks were large, heavy, and frequently quite old.

We were on this family trip with our cousins, in two old station wagons, one towing the boat. On the way back down the mountain, we'd stop frequently to cool our brakes. We'd turn the vehicles off, get out and stetch our legs, and us young kids would begin playing around while the adults enjoyed the breathtaking views from our high perch down into the valley.

At one particular stop, the turnoff was on the left (mountain) side of the road, and the families had stopped, turned off the cars, and had then walked across the (then empty) highway to peer down the side of the steep mountain. Then, we heard a sound that momentarily froze everyone in their tracks. A logging truck coming down the tiny mountain road behind us had obviously overheated his heavy rig's brakes coming down the steep road, and was excitedly blasting his horn, warning anyone ahead that he MUST get into a turnoff, or risk losing control of his rig.

I don't know if anyone actually saw the truck, but the sound of his horn was enough to spur the adults into frantic action. My cousin Steve (probably around 19 at the time) grabbed me under one arm, my brother John under his other, and sprinted across the highway to the cars with the other adults, hurled us into the back of their car, and both families skedaddled out of the turnoff so the distressed trucker could stop and cool his truck's brakes.

For the next hour or more, we played "cat and mouse" with that rig. We would turn into a turnoff and take a couple minutes to let our cars' brakes cool a bit, only to be chased out of our resting place by the lumber truck behind us, who obviously needed the turnoff more than we did. But after that first episode caught us all unprepared, requiring us to sprint across the road to avoid a crash with the logging truck, our families kept close to the cars, and never turned the motors off. Our parents remained vigilant for the inevitable horn around the bend behind our vehicles, warning us that we must move, no matter how hot OUR brakes seemed.

Today, God brought this memory back to remind me that, just as he reminded the Israelites through Moses in the book of Deuteronomy, we haven't yet arrived at our destination, so we should be prepared to move where and when God tells us. We must not become complacent in our present state, so that, when God's call comes like that of the insistent honking of the lumber truck, we're prepared to move, and not scrambling to save ourselves.

Be prepared. Stay prepared. And listen for God. Move when God says to move. Because unlike any human, God knows what's around the bend.

© 2008 Scotty Ward