Life is like a long bus ride with some interesting people hopping on and off at different stops. These passengers are our emotions, experiences, and expectations. They are present, yet meant to come and go.
Imagine the bus door flings open. Someone like Grief, Delight, or Job Promotion climbs on and takes a seat next to you. With attentiveness, you ask what they need and why they are here. Then, when it’s time, you let them get off the bus.1
Living this way requires a level of maturity that believers lack early on. Instead, we tend to let these passengers stay on and even drive the bus, which causes internal mayhem. Perhaps it starts with some nagging anxiety. Confusion follows. We feel increasingly compelled to control people and things—a direct result of our life feeling out of control. Gradually our daily routines, religious beliefs, and images of self and others become compulsions. Trying to avoid pain and loss, we cling with tight fists to people and things. Faith shifts into manipulation, hope into bitterness, and love into self-protection.
The spiritual terms “attachment” and “idolatry” are often used to describe this condition, which results in an unruly, disordered ride. Truthfully, we’ve hopped behind the wheel and life is now from “the flesh” (Gal. 5.16-21; Rom. 7.5, 13.14).
Would it help to know that none of us are designed to drive the bus? No matter how smart, spiritually mature, or gifted we are, God did not create us with the capacity to navigate life without Him. If that angers or scares you, don’t worry. God can handle it. And He will continually give you the grace needed to surrender the driver’s seat to Christ, the only one equipped to drive.
Reflect:
What is your ride like right now?
What—or who—is currently driving?
1For more on this metaphor of life and the bus, refer to Mark E. Thibodeaux, SJ, God’s Voice Within.
