Guardrails

​As a young kid, my family and I would travel to my grandparents’ house for Christmas in Augusta, Georgia. I remember these trips and how much fun they were.  My Dad would wake us up at 3am and my brother, sister and I would get in the back of my parent’s 1974 2-door Pontiac. Actually, it’s a good thing we were so young because how we all three fit in the back of that car was nuts. My parents would travel with us in the early morning or late night, so we would sleep and not kill each other. I think the real reason was that they would not have to hear us ask, “are we there yet” for the 8-hour drive. When we would wake up, usually we were about 1 hour away from our grandparents’ house. As soon as we arrived, Grandma and Papa would have a huge breakfast for us. We had such great times spending time with our cousins and family. We always hated to leave to come back home.
However, this one Christmas my parents decided to leave at night instead of the early morning. After dinner with my Grandparents my parents got us in the car and off we went. About 2 hours in the trip, all of us kids were sleeping. The next thing I remember was waking up to us what I thought was a drive down a bumpy dirt road. As I truly woke up, we were stopped and there was not site of a bumpy road. My mom was screaming to my Dad to get the kids out this car. My dad was started yelling at us to wake us up. Then was helping us crawl out the window of the car. At first, I thought Dad was finally letting us act like the Dukes of Hazzard. But this was far from it. My mom actually lost control of the car on the interstate and we went into the median and the car ran up on a guardrail and was sliding sideways on it. That was the bumpy dirt road I thought we were on. The car actually stopped 50 feet from a bridge which had a 100 foot drop off the river below. As we all got out of the car on that dark cold night we all looked at the car dangling on the guardrail. My parents told us later, as we got older that the guardrail actually saved our family. If it was not for Gods hand stopping the car when it did and for the guardrail the car would have gone over the drop off and who knows if we would be here today.
As I was thinking about this story, it came to me what guardrails actually do. Do we have guardrails setup in our own lives to keep us from running off the cliff of life? Guardrails are put in place to keep us out of the danger zone. Each day I walk through this life I try to make sure I have guardrails up around work, my tongue, and my financials. You can fill in your own blank with what you need guardrails with. As a Christ follower, God helps and teaches me in his word of where I need guardrails. Because He is the ultimate guardrail for me. Even if you don’t believe in Jesus you can apply this to your own life. Life has enough danger zones we don’t see. So, it is always good to have these guardrails in place.