A few months ago I had this mental crisis as Peggy, Miss Evelyn and I were travelling up I-95 to visit family.  It was mid-afternoon and we were making excellent time.  We had gotten through Washington DC without delay, never a sure thing, and were now in northern Maryland.  The weather was nice, the road was clear and the traffic light.  It was almost too good to be true.

And then we crossed the border into Delaware.  In a heartbeat the speed limit dropped from 65 to 55.  Nothing had changed.  The road was just as clear, the traffic just as light.  But the Delaware powers-that-be had decided that we all needed to slow down.  I felt this tension build up in me.  This was stupid.  I another half hour or so and I’d be in New Jersey and the speed limit would climb again.  I saw no good reason to drop it for this tiny little state.  What was the point anyway?

Apparently most of the people sharing the road with us saw no point to it either.  They just kept sailing along, taking no notice of the reduced speed limit.  A few, like me, dutifully slowed down.  But I found myself fuming as I was passed again and again.  I’d like to say that it was my Christian desire to be obedient to the law that kept me from hitting the gas but it was likely my fear that a state trooper might be around the next curve in the road.

I knew my attitude was wrong.  I was fairly certain that, unlike with Job, God was not up in heaven telling Satan “Have you considered my servant, Tom?  Look how he is obeying the speed limit there.” 

There is something about the law isn’t there?  Something in us chafes at rules and laws we don’t like and seems to make us want to disobey them.  Tell a little child “don’t touch that” and he will be consumed with the desire to do just that, even if the thought had not been in his head before you spoke.  And we really don’t grow out of that. 

When Paul tells his generation that “the law brings death” he is not critical of the law, just making clear our total inadequacy to follow it.  When Martin Luther had his epiphany about grace he was not critical of the law, he was just grasping that it could never serve as a basis for his security in the Lord.  In neither case did they see grace as a mechanism to obey the law, they grasped that grace supplants the law.

And yet, there I was on I-95 asking God for the grace to obey the law.  As long as I felt constrained to follow the speed limit (I ought to…) I’d be unhappy and maybe before long I would give in and speed up.  Grace will never be a tool of the law and that was what I was trying to make it.  Grace however could give me a new purpose.  Not obedience, but the glory of God.  I could obey the speed limit because it glorified God.  It may sound strange but that day I had to tell myself to go through Delaware at the speed of grace, not at the speed of law. 

A few days later, on the southbound homeward trip, I actually uttered a mental prayer as I approached Delaware.  “Lord, let me go through this state at the speed of grace.”  The speed limit became just a vehicle for me to glorify God.  If our minds are focusing on “I ought to…pray, give, study God’s Word, witness, etc.” we really can’t expect grace to help us.  If the glory of God is our motive, we can be delighted to find that grace is sufficient. 

What is there in your life that you need to take at the speed of grace?