Keep Focus

My son took a motorcycle class this weekend.  I was proud of him.  It stretched him physically, and emotionally.  I was also in awe of what God has done.  If you haven’t read the story of his birth, you should.  It starts here as part of the Grace Street series on this blog.  Start here and keep reading forward.  He shouldn’t be able to do all the things he does.  He is a miracle!

He finished his first year of Medical School with excellence!  Now he can drive a motorcycle.  He inspires me.  If you want to do something, go for it!  Try it! But he shared another lesson with me when he was telling me all the details about his motorcycle class experience.

If you ride, you probably know this.  I don’t ride.  Heck, I can’t even ride a bicycle.  Yes I am one of the handful of people in this world who never learned to ride a bike.  I’m balance challenged .  J 

After hours of classwork to assure a knowledge base, he sat on the bike early on Saturday morning.  I can imagine he was thrilled.  It was going to be a long hot day.  First, they walked the bike.  Then they turned the key.  The power of the engine must have spiked the adrenalin rush.  250 cc’s of motorcycle power was in his hands.

I imagine that since he had balance, the straight line driving was not difficult.  But nothing is ever a truly straight line.  I became aware of that in South Dakota.  I realized that in God’s creation, God doesn’t like straight lines.  People do – we love things to move in an orderly straight fashion.  In God’s world, He doesn’t plan nor lead His people in a straight line.  

You can read more about that here.

The coach told the new motorcycle riders some very important information.  When you are going into a curve, don’t look at the curve.  Don’t look at the bike either.  Just look at where you want to go.  Look to the end of the curve. 

I don’t know exactly how he felt as he took his first curve.  I can’t imagine how he felt, even with a sense of balance, when the motorcycle leaned nearly to the ground so he could maneuver that curve.  I would have been terrified.  I would have never attempted it.  But following the coaches advice, he looked at where he was going, not where he was, not where he had been, not the vehicle that was taking him there, but where he was going.

I think that’s very good advice for a lot of things.  Think about it.  I think when we hit a curve we are tempted to focus on the curve.  We worry and stress – at least I do!  We wonder if we’ll make it.  We wonder if we’ll tip the bike over in that curve.  When we focus on those things we make maneuvering the curve not only difficult but sometime impossible. 

There is another temptation in the curve.  It is looking past the curve.  If you look too far down the road, you lose your perspective.  You think of all the other obstacles that might come your way.  Maneuvering the curves in life are not easy.  Life’s curves are harder than riding a motorcycle – even though I think that’s pretty difficult.  But focus on the end of the curve as you enter it and though you may lean and almost touch the ground, you’ll get there.