How Much Is In Your Tank?

"Be still and know that I am God."       Psalm 46:10

Have you ever experienced an issue with your car that only seemed to happen when you are driving it, but as soon as you take it to the dealership, the issue mysteriously disappears?

For the past few months, my car has developed an odd habit that only seems to occur when I am sitting in the driver's seat.  At least once every few days, while the car is in motion, the interior lights will suddenly turn on and the automatic driver's seat will unexpectedly move backwards.  At first, this was quite alarming as I found myself moving away from the steering wheel while the car was in motion!  When I have passengers that witness the unexpected chain of events, they are often startled as they watch me slowly move backwards as they are speaking to me. Sometimes, it is even comical to watch passengers' reactions as I try to nonchalantly act like nothing wrong is happening. However, what's frustrating is that every time my husband takes it to the dealership or a mechanic... it NEVER happens!

Obviously, there is an electrical problem but no one can seem to figure out why. So when the entire front panel of my car turned red and an outline of a battery appeared during my drive home from visiting my son in Kentucky, Ken once again took my car into the dealership to see if this electrical mystery could be solved.

In the meantime, he switched cars with me and I began to drive his car... and I took this vehicle everywhere!  However,  one of the very handy features of my car, which I have become very accustomed to,  is that when I have only 50 miles of gas left, a warning bell goes off and a light comes on reminding me that I need gas.  As a result, I never check my gauges because the warning light also keeps me aware of when I need gas.  Apparently, Ken scaled back a little when he bought his car, and unbeknowst to me, his car does not have this feature.

Finally, one day, as I was pulling out of my driveway, the thought came to me that I had not put any gas in this car since I started driving it, and I just wondered how many more miles before the warning light would come on.  As I look down at all the gauges, I gasped when I finally noticed that it said that I had only 3 miles until I hit empty!  My heart raced, as I comprehended how close I was to running out of gas!  I prayed like crazy, begging God to help me get out of my subdivision and to the gas station at the corner.  I tried not to accelerate too hard when I pulled out onto Decker Road, but I anxiously wanted to get to the gas station as fast as I could.  I could feel sweat start to exude from my forehead as I waited to traffic to clear and allow me to turn left into the gas station.  What a relief it was when I was able to pull into the station and retrieve the much needed fuel!

I was so close to running out of gas, and what's worse, I had no idea that I was in such danger!  Sometimes, life is very similar, especially during busy seasons.  We tend to go and go and not realize how dangerously close we get to running out of fuel and hit emotional, physical, and spiritual emptiness. Our "Martha-like" tendencies cause us to believe that we can keep adding more responsibilities to our plate when we really should be duplicating Mary's behavior and spending more time with Jesus and replenishing and refueling our spiritual tank.

As we enter into the very last busy month of school that is affectionately referred to as "May Madness",  may God help each of us balance the daily demands of busy agendas by scheduling and prioritizing our refueling efforts of prayer and devotional time with our Heavenly Father.

Praying that our entire St. Matthew family would experience a wonderful and enjoyable last month of the 2016/2017 school year!

In Jesus' love,
Mrs. Palka

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