The Little Golf Cart

or “How to Obtain Joy and Peace”

Abundant peace belongs to those who love Your instruction; nothing makes them stumble. – Psalm 119:165 HCSB

There once was a little golf cart who sought joy and peace in the excitement of adventure. “Perhaps if I taste of life’s thrills I will be fulfilled and satisfied.” So he tried to race in the Baja. Of course, being a golf cart, all he was beat up, dirty and received a loss on his record.

Then he decided, “I’ll try parachuting. Surely that will be so exciting that I will be happy!” He drove to a nearby military airport and convinced the crew of a cargo plane to help him parachute. They would fly him high in the sky, strap a parachute to his canopy and push him off the back. He never stopped to wonder why they kept snorting, giving each other significant looks and occasionally letting out laughing brays. He just ascribed it to the tremendous joy they must have from parachuting.

Of course, when he was pushed off the back, he weighed more than the parachute could hold and shortly after leaving the plane a line snapped. The chute candlesticked just enough to create some drag, but his descent rate was terrible! At the last minute, the other lines snapped, dropping him to the ground with a terrible crunch ending his admittedly exciting but short and completely futile life.

All the while, bouncing around in his glove compartment was a manual written by the golf cart manufacturer, cram-packed with useful information on the proper role and lifestyle of golf carts. It basically gave point-by-point instructions on how a golf cart could attain joy and peace.

When we were created by Yahweh Boreh[1], He did not leave us without resources. His prophets and apostles wrote down a manual that tells us our purpose. He has great plans for us, plans for good and not calamity.[2] He wants us to have an abundant life.[3] When we not only understand that idea but submit to it, we will be on the way to peace and joy.

When behave stupidly like Adam and Eve who thought that true fulfillment lay outside of Hashem’s plans, we get the same results: banishment from God’s blessed presence, misery and curses. It’s not that the Lord God narcissistically pouts when we don’t do what He wants and smacks us about the head.

Think of His will as a cone of light cast by a street lamp. As we move closer to the center of that cone, we get more and more direct illumination. We don’t stumble because we see clearly. The further from that center that we move, the progressively darker[4] it gets until we are in “outer darkness where there is weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.”[5]

God’s will is perfect for us. Happy is the person who grasps that critical fact and lives accordingly.

[1] God our Creator; Isaiah 40:28
[2] Jeremiah 29:11
[3] John 10:10
[4] Romans 1:21, 26, 28
[5] Matthew 8:12; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30