OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR
As I was driving down the road one day, I began to think if life can be compared to driving. I thought on that comparison on this subject and a phrase came to me and it goes something like this.
If life is like a highway, then the soul must be the car. Yea, life can be just like a highway, you are gong along and then you have a flat tire, and it interrupts your trip. Maybe you are getting off to rest or even get your fuel tank filled back up.
I know I have had times I needed to get off the life’s highway and take a rest, I also know I have had to get off life’s highway to get myself fuel back up because I was running on empty.
So, if life is like a highway, then the car is your soul.
I was still driving down the road mulling this over in my head when I glanced over to my right side mirror to see if I could change lanes and everyone has seen this but really hasn’t taken much notice to it. There is a small inscription etched in that side mirror and I want to use that little line as the topic of this sermon this morning,
It reads, objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
Everyone one of us has looked back over the years in which we have lived. We have often wondered what if this would have happened or what if I would have done this or that, just how much that could have changed my life. How that change may have affected the car running on that highway of life.
Now, I am glad some of those choices I stayed away from and kept on traveling down that highway, I did not need to take another road or even pull off to get something else.
But let us look at what the Bible says about looking back, because those objects in that mirror may be closer than they appear.
Let us see when Lot and his family were leaving the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in the book of Genesis. When they were leaving Lot’s wife looked back and she became a pillar of salt.
Luke 9:62
62 And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.
(Here is the book of Luke the person that Jesus was telling this too is not mentioned but if you read in the Book of Matthew , he notes this was a scribe)
So we read that it seems for us to look back and find that what is behind us is catching up on us.
I remember an old black baseball player named Satchel Page people were always questioning him on his age, in fact he really did not know his true age because they never found any birth records of him. They knew he was getting on up there in years but still he could throw that baseball like a young man in his twenties.
He had this saying; “I do not look back, because something might be catching up with me”
I am not telling you here this morning that looking back is always bad and certainly not worthy of not being fit for the Kingdom of Heaven.
What I believe Jesus was telling this Scribe to follow me you must leave those other things behind that will interfere or even delay you in accepting Jesus or even make you to not accept him. You cannot look back on the things you have left but look forward to the thing I will give you.
If you read in verses 57-61 that will clear it up for you as to why Jesus told him that looking back isn’t a very good idea.
We need to look forward, going forward with God, to work for God, serving God, pleasing God, we cannot rest on the past to get us into the future.
There are three (3) things I want to point out here today on “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear”
#1- LIFE CAN BE TOO FAST
A) Living fast can HURRY YOU, - Life is so fast that you seem to be in a hurry to just fill up on what you need for today, much less about tomorrow. We seem to try to fill ever spare second in a day, but you are filling them up with the wrong fuel.
It is the low octane gas you are putting in your tank. You need that High Octane gas to enrich you, make you run smoother, give you better gas mileage as you go down life’s highway. Sometimes we just want tomorrow to hurry up and get here, just allow God to guide you into the tomorrows.
Todays has enough things to keep you going than to worry about tomorrow, we just live life way too fast.
B) Life can sometime HAUNT YOU – A fast life will result in missed opportunities which in turn might well haunt you for years to come. I think everyone can attest to not taking the time extra to let certain things happen in our lives and we look back on those choices and it sometimes haunts us with the what if this or that would have happened.
Living too fast can rush your choices and those can sometimes hunt you on down the road.
#2- LIFE CAN BE TOO FURIOUS
A) Life can sometimes BELITTLE YOU – DEF: make (someone or something) seem unimportant
A life full of furious activities will become a life that will soon frustrate you and to those that have gathered in and around you will begin to belittle you for small achievements in your life.
You may have never stopped long enough to finish anything in life. Just hopping form one place to another. When others see you they see a person who has never finished anything they have started and the people around you will sense that you have never completed anything that was important in your life.
You may keep ending you on one way street or ended up at roadblocks along your travels on life’s highway.
B) Life can BOTHER YOU – You may think I’m crazy but if you really are honest with yourself, a furious life will bother you. Endless nights and endless days of just thinking of how you can get ahead of the next person.
You might make a little more money, maybe a little more prestige but after all the glitter has worn away from those attractions all that you have done will start to bother you.
Maybe the things that will bother you is how you treated others to get where you are. Maybe bother you that you forgot to spend time with God and to get filled up with His Word and His ways rather than your way. But life can bother you if you did not drive across the smooth well-planned highways in your life.
#3- LIFE CAN BE FATAL
A) Life can POSSES you, this type of lifestyle becomes you. It has possessed you that you only see things you want. You are consumed in your life that nothing else can come into it. Your only thoughts is to what can I do to get more of what I have and I am speaking in material ways this world offers.
I’m sure you have seen people driven by their job where they have allowed their families to go in different directions, for that matter no directions, just wandering about. You have no friends because all you wanted to talk about was you, your job and your accomplishments.
B) Life will PASS YOU BYE.
I want to say, after all is said and done, all the hoopla, all the crowning glories, you begin to look around and find that you are all alone.
Life has passed you bye, you have never stopped on the side of life’s highway and smelled to flowers, you have never taken the time while on Life’s Highways to let anyone enter your life. You have never allowed yourself to be available to God and for him to love you as He wanted to.
IN CLOSING HERE
Have you have let life pass you bye and never took the time to tell people that you loved them that you cared for them.
You have missed the laughs, the dinners around the table with your spouse and children. You never took the time for a vacation.
You never took time out to seek God, seek his grace and to accept Jesus as your Lord and savior. You kept the foot on the pedal going down life’s highway and never noticed anything around you but what you had wanted in your life.
I have talked to a many of people in my life and I am sure you have too that has told you that it seems just like yesterday that I was young and in my twenties or thirties. Where did all this time go?
You and I have talked to people who have said, I wished I could have done things differently now as I look back in that mirror.
Object in the mirror are closer than they appear,
Let me ask you this morning, are you looking more in the mirrors of your life than what is now around you?
Have you lived so fast that it hurried you and now it haunts you?
How you live a furious lifestyle that people now belittle you and it bothers you?
Have you lived a fatal style life that it possessed you all those years and you now feel it has passed you by?
I do know one rest stop on Life’s Highway you should never drive past, that can be found in;
Matthew 11:28-30
28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Exodus 33:13- 14:
13 Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation is thy people.
14 And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest
Do not leave here this morning feeling that there is nothing more for you to learn or do in this life’s journey. It well can be the beginning of the greatest trip you have ever taken on this thing we call Life’s Highway.
Because if Life is but a highway, then our soul is just the car.
