First Baptist Church of Herndon

No Center Line

Linda Soller | Aug 12, 2013

They are currently repaving the road I use daily to get to and from work. To avoid delays I am careful to head out before they start each day and thankfully they are finished for the day before I go home. The other morning I noticed a large yellow sign with big black letters which said, “No Center Line.” I feel certain the sign had been there for weeks, but I just hadn’t really noticed. This particular morning the words, no center line, struck me as important. My mind began wandering as it often does and I thought about the significance of a center line in the road.

The center line in a road communicates a great deal with simplicity. Double lines mean you can’t pass, a broken line means you can pass, and the simple existence of any type of center line reminds us that we must be careful of oncoming traffic. It seems like we should be able to make those driving decisions without having a line, but apparently we can’t or there would be no need to tell us in big print that the center line was not there. Just picture two cars driving down the road, side by side, while the drivers do their thing and don’t leave room for any other car to be beside them. Immediately we can imagine all types of things going wrong that would have been prevented by a center line.

Daily we move about on the roads, our homes, offices, and sidewalks following simple directions given by things we take for granted like center lines on the roads. These simple things bring order to our life and in most cases make us a bit safer. Have you ever been pushing your cart around a crowded grocery store and thought if everyone would just follow the rules of the road we would get around just fine? Try telling that to the kid in the humongous cart shaped like a car being pushed around by his flustered parent.

Our faith is much like the center line of a road. We know what it tells us to do. We also know that we can choose to ignore it. What happens if we ignore it? Well we may be putting ourselves or others in danger, but it is possible that we may not suffer any immediate result. Like the time you crossed the solid yellow line because you were texting and thank goodness you got back in your lane unharmed. I bet it crossed your mind that the results could have been much different. That is much the way that faith serves as a center line. Ignore it and you may not suffer immediate negative results, but let’s face it, we know when we shouldn’t have crossed that line. Faith guides us down the highway of life. It is not really a complicated thing. In nearly every situation we know what the right thing to do is, and what’s the wrong thing to do. Going through life without any faith can be challenging, maybe even scary, like a road with no center line.

Have a great week :o) Linda