p. 171 | Who Is Driving? by Rev. Wm. Lamson

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 13, 1882

Who Is Driving?

By Rev. Wm. Lamson

WE often think we are succeeding by our own foresight or skill. Hence we are keeping a keen lookout, and employing all our wisdom; but sometimes the control of a mightier hand and a wiser intelligence is so manifest that we cannot fail to see and to acknowledge it. Who that believes in God and in his providence cannot recall instances in which he has been guided by a wisdom not his own, and been vouchsafed deliverances which he could not have achieved?

A father and his little son were once riding along a familiar road with a gentle horse. To gratify his child the father placed the reins in his hand, but at the same time, unseen, retained his own hold on them. As they rode on, they saw approaching them, at terrific speed, a runaway team. The danger was great and imminent. But the father guided his horse so that a collision was avoided, and the danger escaped.

When all was over the little son looked up to his father, and with choked utterance said, "I thought I was driving, but I wasn’t, was I papa?"

So often does the child of God, when some peril has been escaped, or some deliverance has been vouchsafed in ways unforeseen and unthought of, have occasion to say, "Father, I thought I was driving, but I wasn’t." Oh, it is, it is blessed to feel that the reins are in the hands of One mightier and wiser than we are. And it is blessed on the eve of some signal deliverance to look into the face of our Father and say, "Thou hast done it. Thy hands held the reins."—Rev. Wm. Lamson, in Watchman.