Who Has the Wheel?

As seen in the HEARTbeat and the Village Voice

Who Has the Wheel?

            Like many of you, I enjoy music.  I played in the high school band, wrote a little drum music, and even played drums in a contemporary gospel band……way back when!  I do enjoy almost all genres of music with the exception of rap.  Most songs tell a story with their words, but for the life of me I can’t understand what rap is trying to say!

            Growing up, country and western music was a mainstay in the Walker house.  I guess that is why it evokes fond memories.  Today the music is called just country.  I do believe it has held its popularity and even grown because of the stories many of the artists tell with the words.  One such song is by Carrie Underwood titled, “Jesus Take the Wheel.”  The story is about a young mother on the road to her parents’ house on a Christmas Eve.  She had experienced an extremely hard year, quite possibly on her own.  Her young baby was in the back seat asleep in its car seat.  All of a sudden, she hits a sheet of “black ice.”  She was going too fast to begin with, and as a result of the speed, she quickly lost control of the spinning car.  In her despair, she cried out, “Jesus take the wheel.”

            When the car safely came to rest on the roadside with the baby still sound asleep in the back, a prayer came from the lips of the young mother.  She asked for forgiveness for not living for Jesus over the past year.  The moment of desperation led to a prayer of thanksgiving.

            Who has the wheel in our life?  We need to ask ourselves that simple question from time to time.  Are we driving our lives?  If so, where is Jesus?  Oh, Jesus is with us, but we’ve relegated Him to passenger seat, and in some cases to the back seat altogether.  It’s only when we hit a sheet of so-called black ice and our lives begin to spin out of control do we call out to the Lord and ask Him to save us – save us from ourselves!

            If you go back and look at the words of the song, you’ll find the young mother saying a two-fold prayer.  She asked Jesus to save her from the road’s treacherous conditions as she traveled to her parents’ home.  The second aspect of her prayer was to ask Jesus to save her from the road she was traveling down in her life.

            When we begin to see our lives spinning in one direction or another, we need to ask ourselves who has the wheel.  Are we going to fast or “driving” too recklessly?  In asking that, we also need to survey the car and see where we have placed Jesus.

            Christ wants us to enjoy the life He has given us.  But we need to be an occupant in the car, not the driver.  Jesus will take us on this journey and to the places of wonder, if we only let him drive!