Life and a Bike Route

For some reason, I have always struggled with spacial relations.  As you might imagine, this made geometry and parallel parking a nightmare for me.  I get nervous when I need to maneuver my bicycle in a narrow space.  Well, okay, a space which I perceive as a narrow. 

When I leave my neighborhood on my bike, I need to use the sidewalk for a block because London Blvd. is very busy. I make a sharp right hand turn at the end of Chesapeake Avenue and steer the bike through the handicapped ramp to the sidewalk.  I get concerned that a car may be turning into the neighborhood.

Even though I have negotiated this little space hundreds of times over the years, my stomach tightens every time I bike through it, which is at least ten times a week.  The second I start to get nervous, the bike begins to wobble, as my balance suffers because of my nervous thoughts. 

Instead of concentrating on the many times I have safely traveled in this space, I choose to concentrate on the remote possibility that I may fall or somehow steer into oncoming busy traffic.  In one second, I change from confidently peddling and enjoying my ride to a sick sense of dread. The moment that my thoughts focus on a bad outcome, my body does its best to help me out with that.

It suddenly hit me on Sunday as I rode my bike past that very spot that my situation is a metaphor about many things in my life.  If I proceed forth in the confidence that God is with me and I have all I need to succeed, I do well.  When I allow doubt about my abilities or God’s provision to assail me, I begin to wobble on that narrow road that I’m supposed to be traversing.  God wasn’t just throwing out random thoughts in Phil 4:8 when He told us to concentrate on what is excellent or praiseworthy, noble and true.   He was telling us how to hit the road, so to speak.