"Keep it between the ditches." "Stay out of the ditch." Has anyone ever encouraged you to drive safely and carefully with phrases like these? In the U.S., running in the ditch isn't such a big deal. The ditch is well off the shoulder of the road, past a gradual slope, with plenty of warning. (And, if you do pull into a ditch, you can usually just pull out.) It's not a major threat to daily driving.
Not so in Accra.
In the city, the ditches are well defined. About 18 inches deep and 8 inches wide, concrete, just along the edge of the driving lanes, the ditches serve as gutters, sometimes as sewers, and clear lines between the pedestrian sidewalk and the vehicle roadway. Designed to be covered with steel grates, many are deep, open gutters with no curb or other warning of their presence or their missing grates.
It makes for careful driving. You're either in the lane or in the ditch. You take corners carefully, use driveways and exits, and drive where you should. Or a wheel drops in the ditch!
Because the cars are usually small, a couple of guys can often lift while you reverse and get the wheel back on the road. But who knows what damage was done to the car, the effects of the sudden stop on the passengers, and the embarrassment to the driver?
We often approach our Christian life like U.S. drivers. We don't take the lines too seriously, the curves very carefully or the ins and outs very rigidly. The rules are flexible and forgiving. But I wonder if we wouldn't be more pleasing to God-and more safe and secure ourselves-to view the Way a little more precisely and His directives a little more seriously?
Not every culture is quite so forgiving, nor every error so insignificant. Sometimes, what we view as a simple mistake or slight error, does unknown damage to us-our reputation and our confidence, to those close to us, and gives opportunity for ridicule by those watching our lives. I wonder what kind of ditches line the streets in God's Kingdom?