Several years ago, I was directing exit traffic in my church’s parking lot. A woman rolled down her passenger window and yelled at me, “Y’all are making it worse out here!” We had just updated our traffic pattern, and it had actually shortened the exit time by about nine minutes on average. I couldn’t have convinced her of that. Between setting cones and actually directing traffic, I’ve spent between 3,000 and 4,000 hours on those parking lots. I’ve been a consultant for other churches’ parking teams across three states. I didn’t tell that angry driver either of those credentials, though. It wouldn’t have mattered. She knew better.
I was reminded of that encounter in a very different place this morning. I’d been hiking for a couple of hours. Almost back to my car, I walked past a popular scenic overlook where college kids gather every evening to watch the sunset. The nonprofit that owns the property allows them to set up their hammocks between the trees and has even created a gravel parking area on the side of the road. To protect the grass on the far side of the gravel, the organization has set out some commercial-grade orange cones.
As I approached the vacant roadside an hour after sunrise, the cones were strewn all over the place from the night prior. The college students had thrown them aside so they could park closer to the overlook, so they wouldn’t have to walk from a paved parking area about 20 yards further away. As I reset the cones for the owners (for the second time this week), I thought about that woman who chewed me out years ago.
And I thought about a time when I had moved cones to do what I wanted.
I was attending a leadership conference in Atlanta. Some of my church’s staff and volunteers had secured a vacant corner on the far side of the parking lot. There, our group of a hundred or so Virginians would enjoy a catered picnic. When I pulled onto the campus, I saw that the event staff’s cones were going to lengthen and complicate my journey to my friends. So, I stopped, moved a couple of cones, drove into the lot I wanted, replaced the cones where they had been, and parked over near our church van. I caught some looks from the guys in vests. I absolutely know what they were thinking, as I’ve watched a parishioner belligerently drive over a curb to go around a queue line. I’ve observed people moving cones to skip our system or just driving over the cones right in front of me in protest.
Whether or not you’ve ever flouted the directions of someone in a reflective safety vest or the cones they’ve set out, you’ve moved cones, too. We all have. Thousands of years ago, Jesus set out some cones. He had reasons for his pattern—reasons far more sovereign and perfect than anything I bring to a parking lot. For some reason, we think we know better. The cones are movable, and Jesus often lets us drive right through his bright orange boundaries. We believe we know better, that Jesus must’ve overlooked our situation, that he wasn’t taking our comfort or convenience into account. We may not roll down our figurative windows and yell, “You’re making it worse,” but we’re behaving as if that’s true.
This past week, my buddies and I sat around a fire, talking about where we struggle to trust God. We had different responses, but they all boiled down to this answer: “When he’s not doing what I want him to do.” Oswald Chambers wrote it a different way, “The root of all sin is the suspicion that God is not good.” In other words, when we don’t like where his cones are, we just move them. Or, if we’ve got a lot of momentum, we plow right through them.
Doing things God’s way often takes longer and requires more patience. Staying inside Jesus’ cones makes us feel like we’ve lost our autonomy. Going where the Holy Spirit points sometimes doesn’t make sense to us. But I can tell you as someone who has set out cones weekly for a decade, those cones are there for someone’s safety or the community’s benefit—or both.
You and I don’t know better.
Our intentions aren’t purer or more altruistic.
We can’t improve on God’s setup.
But if you’re dead set on moving some cones, I can help you get it out of your system. I happen to know a place with a couple hundred cones you can arrange to your heart’s content.
