THE CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL has a new advertising plan to help us remember the importance of buckling up those seatbelts. It’s a visual reminder that if they catch you not wearing your seatbelt, they will ticket you!
As a kid I was brought up riding in cars with no seatbelts, and with metal dashboards and non-breakaway steering wheels. No airbags or crumple zones in those babies, just lots of heavy metal and huge chrome bumpers. So, when they starting installing seatbelts in our cars we were all pretty reticent to use them. What a nuisance and inconvenience they seemed to be. Heck, who cares if they were there to save lives, we made it just fine without them thus far, so unbuckled they remained.
But, that fact was they would save lives if we used them. And as cars changed (got smaller and made out of plastic and lesser gauge metal) they came to be more and more important in the saving of lives. Today, if I see a person not using it (or a child unrestrained in a child‘s car seat) I think they are being incredibly foolish with their lives, not to mention breaking the law.
The laws that God gave the children of Israel, that are detailed in such portions of Scripture such as Leviticus, are much like seatbelts, they are there for our protection. But much like my early response to wearing them, most of us see them as hinderances to our freedom and or at least great inconveniences. But, in reality they are there to keep us from greater harm. They can keep us safe from dangers that we have yet to see as we travel this journey called life. And in many ways they can help us arrive in one piece at our intended destination.
So, I say it’s time to buckle-up for safety. It sure beats a ticket…or worse!