Slot Cars

As seen in the  HEARTbeat and the Village Voice

“Slot Cars”

            Did you ever have slot-car racers when you were a kid?  It is one of the most memorable Christmas presents my brother and I ever received.  We played for hours and hours with the cars, running them at high speed around and around the oval.  I think in the end we just wore them out.

            If you’ve never seen them, the cars run on an oval track made of plastic.  It has either two or three or maybe more slots, or depressions, in the track into which a small protrusion on the underside of the car fits, hence the name “slot.”  A small metal thread runs on both sides of the slot.  It’s through these threads a small electrical charge runs, which gives power to the cars.  Then there is a hand-held device to regulate the amount of power going to the cars to make them go slow, go fast, or go real fast!

            I can remember learning how to race the cars.  In the straight stretches I would give the car as much power as I could to make them fly.  But when the car entered the corners on each end of the oval, I learned to back off on the power.  You see, if you kept the trigger on the hand-held device completely depressed, thereby keeping full power on the cars, they would fly off the track in such a fashion that would make any NASCAR fan cringe.  It took just the right amount of power applied to keep the cars on the track and not flip off.  And when we got really good, the cars would actually fishtail around the corners.  Learning the technique to do this was tedious, but when we got there the racing was a blast.

            When’s the last time your life’s journey jumped the track?  Sometimes we apply way too much power or try way too hard to make things happen just the way we want.  We have our “eyes on the prize” but we fail to see the corner coming.  We don’t slow down and suddenly we lose the grip on the track and off we fly.  “How could we not see that coming,” we ask ourselves.  “How could that happen?  Things were going so great.”  The answer is simple.

            We zig and we zag in our everyday lives.  We plan and plan, but some things don’t go the way we plan them.  Then we wonder how we went wrong.  Notice I said the word “we.”  We rely on our own effort and our own power so much we forget we have the greatest source of power and wisdom available to us in the entire universe.  Yes, God is waiting patiently to help us with anything in our lives.

            Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.”  We trust in ourselves and things go wrong.  But when we trust in God, there are no corners at the end of the straightaways.  Things go smoother.  And when our car flies off the track, its usually our doing, forgetting to trust in God first.

            Don’t let God be your co-pilot today.  Move Him over to the driver’s seat and things will go so much better!