Double yellows

When you look at these double yellow lines, what do you think?

Is it “ooh, can’t park there, its against the law and if I do I will get a ticket” even “oh no, that’s inconvenient for me!”.

Have you like me, ever been tempted to risk it?, saying to yourself “I won’t be long”; “it’s quiet at this time of night, it won’t matter” etc.

But we do well to remember the why. Why are the lines there? Why shouldn’t we park there? Well as we well know the short answer is you may cause an obstruction, or even an accident. An emergency vehicle may be unable to pass through to attend to a life / death situation. At times it is not always easy to see why the lines are there, but hopefully we trust there is good reason.

So: what if there were no double yellow lines. There would be no tickets! Hurray!!

But there’d also be no reminder not to park in unsafe places.

So why am I prattling on about double yellow lines? Earlier this year we looked at the Ten Commandments, the law that God gave to Moses who wrote these ‘double yellow lines’ on tablets of stone for the Israelites. As well as the Ten Commandments there are lots of dos and don’ts in the Bible – to the extent that it is easy to think that it’s not easy to please God.

But just as for the double yellows, it is important to remember that God always has a why for his don’ts (and his do’s). God is for us, he wants the very best for us and even though when he sent Jesus to die to pay the fines for us and so free us from the penalty of sin, the consequences of ‘parking in dangerous places’ remains.

There may not always be double yellow lines for us, so how do we remember God’s precautions for living our best life? Well, we read the scriptures for sure and gently and lovingly remind and perhaps even enlighten one another.