I went to a meeting the other night about the car of the very near future. It’s called an “autonomous car” because “driverless car” scares the pants off most of us. But that’s what it is. No one has to drive it. Google made the prototype, and it’s being tried out all over the country. After logging over 200,000 driverless miles, it has had zero accidents. My driver-led Jeep Grand Cherokee has 170,000 miles on it – and plenty of dings that prove a driver doesn’t necessarily help!

One of the questions thrown out to the panel had to do with wanting a steering wheel to grab should this car lose its techno-mind and aim straight for another car. The car has a kill switch, but that did not satisfy the audience querier. She wanted a wheel to grab to take over!

Isn’t that like us and God? We’ll surrender to Him, sort of, if we can grab our life back when we think He’s messing up. We don’t really have faith that He can take control and wind us through the potholes of our lives, up and downhill till we reach His planned destination for us. We grab the wheel constantly to make our corrections and hit the kill switch when we absolutely don’t want to go where He wants us to go.

The autonomous car has many far-reaching applications for us in the very near future. We just have to be willing to surrender our need for complete control of a vehicle to a computerized intelligence which has a better driving record than we do.

If only we would let ourselves surrender our lives completely to an Intelligence infinitely smarter than any computer ever will be – the One who seeks to direct us away from the wreckage and carnage we will inevitably encounter if we grab the wheel away from Him.