Training wheels on bicycles are useful for those who are learning to keep their balance. There is a time to have them on the bicycle and there is a time to take them off.
Too many people go through life with their training wheels still attached. The training wheels become excess baggage and slow them down. It shows wisdom to know when to take them off and move forward, balancing in life without them.
We soon learn in riding a bicycle that either we keep moving or we fall over. Few people, other than circus performers, can keep their balance unless they are moving forward, so the obvious lesson is to keep moving.
Are we moving forward? Are we pedaling with the training wheels still attached? Where are we going on our bicycle of life? There is no work involved in coasting downhill but we might not like where we end up.
Do we have our goals in life firmly fixed in our minds and are we pedaling toward them? Using the bicycle as the symbol of our locomotion in life as we journey to the kingdom, we can immediately see that many are failing for three obvious reasons.
First, there are some who are not moving at all. They cannot keep their balance standing still so they fall off and make no progress at all. The second group pedals very cautiously and relies on the training wheels to keep them upright. Perhaps this is the group that Solomon had in mind when he warned not “to lean on our own understanding.” If we insist on the support of training wheels instead of believing that God will “keep us from falling” and will “direct our paths,” our progress is slow indeed. Third are those who love to feel the wind in their face as they race downhill full speed. They have no particular goal in mind so they simply take the course of least resistance and go with the flow. Like water which seeks its own level, they only end up at the bottom and sometimes wonder how they ever got so low.
The group we should aspire to be in are those who realize that it takes great effort and hard work to pedal uphill, but who have made the kingdom of God their goal in life and are striving to reach it by moving steadily in the right direction. If we turn from this goal, we soon find ourselves picking up speed as we descend to the broad way that leads to destruction.
Where are we going? Do we have the goal of the kingdom firmly fixed in our mind? If we do not know where we are going, we can be like Alice in Wonderland. She asked the Cheshire Cat which road she should take. The cat asked her where she was going and she replied that she did not know. The cat then told her that if she did not know where she was going, any road would do.
Far too many people drift through life with no well-defined goals and for them the -answer is to take the broad way with the rest of the world where the pedaling is easy.
It takes great endurance to pedal uphill to the kingdom. Jesus said, “He that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved.” Jesus was asked a question, “Lord, are there few that be saved? And he said unto them, Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.” Paul knew where he was going and said, “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Let us “strive to enter in at the strait gate.” Let us “lay aside every weight (the training wheels) and let us run (pedal) with patience the race that is set before us.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One