The Red Light in the Rideshare

For the one who braces in a stranger's car and cannot say why.

You are in the back of somebody else's car at a red light on a Tuesday evening, going to an airport, with a bag on the seat beside you.

The driver is good company. He's talked about his daughter's exams and about a route he uses to avoid the ring road, and it's been an easy fourteen minutes. There is a small wooden cross hanging off the mirror.

At the light he catches your eye in the mirror and asks, warmly and with no edge in it whatsoever, which church you go to.

Four seconds. That is all the light gives you. And in those four seconds something in you braces, hard, the way it does before a door opens onto a room you did not expect.

You say you are not really going anywhere at the moment. He says God bless you anyway, and the light changes, and he talks about the ring road again for the rest of the journey.

The peace of God is what was appointed to rule here, and it was never a reply you had to produce. The written Word that this peace is to rule in your heart, and the Spirit is the one who makes it hold.

What Exactly Were You Defending

Ask the question properly, because the bracing was real and it had an object.

You were in a stranger's car. He does not know your name beyond the app, you will never see him again, and he has no connection to anybody who knows you. There is no social cost available in that situation at all.

So it wasn't reputation. It was something older than that, and it fired before any assessment of the circumstances, which is how you know it wasn't a judgment about this particular man at all.

A judgment takes information. This took none. It went off at the word church, in a car, from a man with a cross on his mirror, which is about as unthreatening a version of the question as exists anywhere.

You were defending against a tone. Somewhere you learned that this question comes with a follow-up, and that the follow-up sorts people, and your body now braces for the sorting before it has established whether any sorting is on offer.

You braced against a tone rather than against anything the man did. The written word appoints peace as the ruler in you, and the Spirit brings it rather than the bracing.

Let the Peace of God Rule

Here is the verse, and the verb in it is a government word.

And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful.Colossians 3:15 (KJV)

Rule. Govern, preside, decide the matter. Paul is not describing a pleasant feeling that visits when circumstances are calm. He is describing something with authority in you, which settles what happens next.

Let is also doing work in that sentence. Something is being permitted rather than achieved. You don't manufacture this peace, you allow it to govern, which means the work is in what you stop rather than in what you produce.

That's a relief if you've been trying. Most people who want peace at a moment like that are attempting to generate it, which is roughly like trying to fall asleep on purpose, and it fails for the same reason.

Paul said that to believers in a mixed and anxious congregation who had plenty of reasons to brace at each other, and it reaches past that room to the back of a car at a red light.

Peace is appointed to govern in you, and governing is not something you manufacture. The written word tells you to let it rule, and the Spirit is the one who supplies it.

Four Seconds Is Enough for Peace

Look at the timing, because you have been treating four seconds as the problem.

Four seconds is not long enough to assemble an explanation. It is long enough to let something govern. Peace does not need a run up, and it does not require you to have prepared anything in advance.

What you did in those four seconds was brace, which also takes no time at all. Both are instant. The difference is which one is permitted to be in charge when the question lands.

That's the actual choice available at a red light. Not a better answer, and not a faster one. Simply which of two instant responses gets to govern those four seconds, and the verse has already appointed one of them to the job.

At a red light the choice is which instant response governs, never which answer you produce. The written word has appointed peace to that office, and the Spirit brings it into the four seconds.

I Am Not Telling You the Bracing Is Sin

Be clear, because a person who reads this as a fault will simply brace about the bracing.

The flinch isn't a moral failure. It's a learned response, laid down in rooms where the question genuinely was a sorting mechanism, and it's doing its best to protect you using badly out of date information.

You wouldn't blame a smoke alarm for going off at toast. You'd note that it was working, and that the thing it detected was not a fire.

Nor am I telling you that you should have given the driver more. You should not. He asked a warm question, you gave a true short answer, and he blessed you and drove on. That exchange was fine.

What I want off you is the alarm. Not the caution. Not the history that taught you to be careful.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

Written by Santiago This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.