from our Lay Leader
Here is an allegory of God’s plan for humankind, inspired by Galatians 3:
When God created us he gave us a bright shiny car that we call life. He showed us the road that he had made and he pointed out the muck and swamps on both sides of the road and told us to keep the car in the middle of the road.
After we had constantly driven the car off the road and into the mud and gotten stuck, he gave us the guardrails of the law. Now we could drive that car and be prevented from going off the road and into the mud. But we took advantage of the law, and we constantly hit those guardrails, first dinging up the paint, then denting the car, and finally bending the frame so the car no longer could even drive a straight line. The car no longer looked like the car of life that we were originally given. Those guardrails helped us from going off the road and getting stuck in the muck, but life on the road still wasn’t what it was supposed to be.
Then God did something unbelievable. He took away the old beat-up car and gave us a brand new car AND his son, Jesus, to drive the car for us, to chauffeur us safely down the road toward our destination, which is Paradise, our perfect life in the garden with God. And when he sent his son, who gave up his life with his father to be our driver forever, God took away the guardrails because they were no longer needed. His son, as long as we let him drive the car, always keeps us on the road and we never have to worry about going off the road and into the muck.
As we sit back and enjoy the ride, looking over Jesus’s shoulder through the windshield and down the road, we have no worries, only the assurance of God’s blessing through His son, our driver. As the garden of God at the end of the road grows closer and closer, we remember those guardrails and how they helped keep us free from getting stuck, but we know our new car is much better off under the control of our Perfect Driver, who made those guardrails unnecessary and obsolete.