Growing up in the South was wonderful for many reasons, one of which is the independent feeling that we gain from the freedom of being able to drive wherever we want to. As a result, many Southern metropolis areas have a driver to vehicle ratio of 0.95. For my part I got my license at the age of 15, the same age my oldest child is now and the thought of her driving is not one I enjoy though I am thankful that the age has been raised to 16. Over the course of my driving, I have spent time staring at many things. Sometimes it's the road in front of me, sometimes it's the mirror showing the road (or the policeman, or the poorly tied down load I'm hauling, or the car that's following me, etc.), sometimes it is something inside the vehicle that attracts all the attention. At least the first 5 years of my driving I was done in vehicles that had seen better days. Some had bad water pumps, bad batteries, bad alternators, bad starters, bad heaters, faulty gauges, flat tires, a shot muffler, and low oil pressure. A few vehicles only had one or two of those problems going on at the same time.

Given a choice, I prefer to drive vehicles with full instrumentation rather than just idiot lights. Always take an oil pressure gauge over a light that only comes on when the engine is about to blow. At least one vehicle I owned blew an engine because the idiot light telling me I had a temperature problem was not bright enough to be seen on a sunny, Southern spring day. The fact that the air conditioner didn't work, it was 90 degrees out, both windows were down, and I made it from Mobile to Biloxi in less than 25 minutes had nothing to do with the light being seen though they may have had everything to do with the water pump going out in the first place.

The drawback to full gauges is that when you know there is a problem you tend to focus on that gauge. I can't count the number of times I paid more attention to the temperature gauge than the road. Or the oil pressure gauge. Or the even now common fuel gauge.

What is it about our fuel tank that we count mileage when we get low. I can make it 10 more miles. There's a gas station that's 2 cents cheaper per gallon 15 miles down the road. I'll be late for church if I stop to fill up on the way. If I stop after church the Methodists will beat me to the restaurant. Rarely do we factor in the time, effort, or money it will cost us to run out of gas before we make it to where we're going. We do however, think that every traffic light takes too long to give us the green when we are within sight of that 2 cent cheaper station. 

Is this a reason why there are more people of an older age in church then there are younger? And I'm not referring to youth or babies so much as teen-aged and twenty year olds. Do we try harder to attend church, read the bible, act more Christ-like because our eyes have been taken off of the road and we're staring at our own Christianity meter?

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