I didn’t know how fast my car could go until I moved to Arizona. The open roads and higher speed limits have given me wonderful memories of desert driving. I was in rural New Mexico on Friday when I saw a sign in the middle of nowhere: “Speeds monitored by aircraft.”

This sign was likely an effort to promote safety, but what did I do?

I took my eyes off the road and up to the sky looking for an aircraft. Hmm. Nothing in sight. I brought my cruise control down a hair, but within five miles I was speeding again, tempted by my own rebellion and the clock – I couldn’t help it! My foot wanted to find that speed again, probably because the sign warned against it. The wind was begging to rush past me more rapidly, stirring up the desert heat into something strangely alive and perfectly deafening.*

Isn’t that the way the law works? Someone, for the sake of the greater good, tells you not to do it. You want to abide. You seriously consider complying. But something within you rises up and says, “What if there isn’t an aircraft up there after all? What if I’m slowing down for nothing?”

I received my first and only traffic ticket when I was sixteen. I pulled over on Marshall Avenue in St. Paul and started sobbing uncontrollably while waiting for the officer to approach. I was beyond embarrassed, disappointed and absolutely certain that the officer held my fate in her hands. Maybe I reacted this way because I’d never been caught red handed or because I was a dramatic teenager. But in that moment, I was certain the law had convicted me in an eternal and irreversible way.

The law guides us. The law instructs us. The law intends to keep us safe and civil. The law can keep us in line or punish us, but that is all it can do.

Luckily, the law will never be the final word. If it were, we’d all be convicted by the monitoring aircraft and out of luck for all eternity. Being human means having that inner voice, despite our faith, that sometimes hopes or wonders, “Maybe God didn’t see that”.

The law has many purposes, but saving us isn’t one of them. The law will do the best it can to keep things orderly and honest, but then grace must chime in as the bigger, final word.

If God was up in his monitoring aircraft watching me drive, I’m sure He smiled and shook his head. He watched me slow down for a moment and then resume my speed after searching the skies for someone to stop me. “Humans. Entirely predictable and desperately in need of me.”

Thank goodness for a God concerned with more than scorekeeping and sin counting. :)

*Note: Don't worry. I wasn't going that fast.