Harsh Symbols

I sat in traffic behind a minivan, or maybe it was an SUV, or maybe even a Hummer. I am pretty blind to car type. I would never make a good eye witness because those kinds of details escape me. I couldn't tell you its color either. But as I daydreamed at the traffic light, gazing at the car in front of me and not seeing, slowly it dawned on me that there was something strange about that car.

The back windshield wiper was completely snapped off, but the tiny stub that remained was flicking back and forth like a bobbed wagging dog tail. I watched the mesmerizing beat of the little wiper stub, and then it dawned on me to wonder:

why don't they turn it off?

It is not like it was doing anything useful. It couldn't. It couldn't even wipe a speck of dust off the window. So that set up a whole train of musings. Did the owners of the car know it was on? Were they also daydreaming? Did they even know it was broken? Did they think it was doing its job cleaning the window? Did they notice the window was still dirty? Since the stub was completely out of their vision, would they EVER notice it was on? Would it tick tock ineffectually for all eternity, while the owners went on their merry way till some day they drove through a deep and perilous mud puddle, splashing and completely obscuring their view out the back window, only to discover that they had no wiper and no way to clean the window?
So many horrible repercussions dashed through my mind that I almost got out of the car to warn them.

And then the light changed and they squealed away to their fate.

I sighed and travelled on, thinking of how often similar things like that occur spiritually. I pray, but become so quickly distracted, that within a moment of promising God my undying devotion, I am planning what carbohydrate to have with dinner. Or I think of someone in need and piously plot what I will do to help right after I finish my work, only to rationalize when my work is done, that I am too tired and too swamped with other needs to follow through on that grand idea. I read my Bible and my spirit is convicted of the need for change in my life, and then the same old ugly sin rears its head again, often before my Bible is closed. I am a broken windshield wiper, working furiously to no avail, going through all the right motions, but cleansing no part of my world.

"This is a rather harsh symbol," I mutter to God, as I drive home.
"That's because you are forgetting who powers your spiritual windshield," He whispers kindly.

Psalm 51: 1-2, 17
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.

My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.








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