Road Rage Reduction

Cory and I are working together in a coffee shop this morning and we were talking about our efforts to put into practice a strategy for prayer that we talked about on Sunday night. Basically the idea is to use down times in our day to focus on different kinds of prayer. For both of us these are the shower, driving to work, driving home from work, and before falling asleep at night. We are focusing on worship, giving thanks, offering requests, and confession. Cory said he's had times this week (in only two days!) when he was praying in the car and something happened that sent him into mild road rage, which made for an interesting contrast to the prayer. Unfortunately, I can associate too well with this.

Yesterday I was on my way way to work and came to a point in my harrowing journey where the two lanes merge into one. The sign on the side of the road clearly indicates that the right lane merges into the left, which means the left lane should have the right of way. Now, because I am so philanthropic, each day I allow one of the cars from the right lane to get in front of me. After patting myself on the back I continue on my way to work. Well, yesterday I was allowing the nice minivan beside me to take the sacred space in front of me, when a big, menacing SUV came roaring up beside me, got within about a foot of the beautiful minivan who was playing by the rules, and made it clear that he was going to try and butt his way in front of me. I was going to have no part of it! (Did I mention I was praying as this started to happen?) So I rode neck-in-neck with the presumptuous SUV as we came closer and closer to the point of merging. This continued to the point that the horrible SUV was about to be driving on the shoulder. At that point I relented and hit the brake so he could take his wrongful place in front of me. I sat in my car, shaking my head like a disappointed parent hoping with all my might that he was looking at me in the rearview mirror.

At that point I remembered I had been praying, and I knew my attitude at the moment was not godly, but even realizing that I was still upset! I prayed about that attitude and slowly remembered that in that bully SUV was a driver who God loved, who I should love. That's the hard thing about prayer, it doesn't allow us to be selfish or angry! Hopefully Cory and I will both reap the benefits of praying in the car and have a road rage reduction.