Guardrails

If you have ever driven down the highway or even on the country back roads you will notice these fence looking things we call guardrails. They are designed in such a way where they keep traffic on the road or even to keep traffic from crossing over into an oncoming lane and preventing any serious or even fatal accidents. The guardrail is there to protect people. 

I have driven past many guardrails that were pretty tore up or had some really major scrapes on them. I can only hope that the people who hit them are ok. The way some of them looked I know the car had to be scratched up pretty bad.

In life, we are not guaranteed that there will never be an “accident”. You can rest assured that we are going to go off the road at some point. I am not speaking physically here, but spiritually. The bible says in Romans that we “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” There will be times when we “fall asleep” at the wheel and begin to veer off the road we are traveling. Just like on the physical road we have guardrails in place in our spiritual lives. Or at least we should. 

There should be people in our lives that take notice when we begin to veer off the road. They ought to be put into place where they will be able to stop us from crossing over into oncoming traffic causing more damage to others or ourselves. Sort of checks and balances or accountability.

The bible tells us in the book of Proverbs that “iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” When an iron blade rubs against another iron blade, it causes friction. This friction results in the blade to be sharpened and making it more efficient in its ability to cut or slice. A sharpened knife can do a better work if it is sharp. In the same way, when we have people in our lives to “sharpen” us, there will be some friction. Kind of like hitting a guardrail. But this friction is not to harm us (although it may cause sparks to fly), but to help us.

Having these guardrails in our lives helps us to be more “efficient” in what God has called us to be- a disciple of Christ. In our physical world, we don’t look at these guardrails as a hindrance, we look at them as a safety measure. We should do the same when it comes to our spiritual world.