nbbusinessjournal.com - Breaking News, New Brunswick, Canada

14 ESCAPES

14 ESCAPES

Whenever you get in your vehicle to go for a drive, no matter weather it is just to the corner store or a 3000 mile vacation, always remember that it is the most dangerous thing that you can do today. You’re going to be travelling at a potentially fatal speed if something happens.

Once you get familiar with your vehicle and are paying attention to the road ahead and to each side, spend some time locating escape routes for yourself. If a pedestrian stepped out in front of your car, right now, and you could not stop, could you steer your car to avoid hitting them and anything else?

Get in the habit of being constantly aware of who and what is around you and where they are and always have a place that you can go if something unexpected happens in front of you. An open lane to your right, a road shoulder or sidewalk, into a shallow ditch, an opening between cars on your left that you can swerve into and back again, if you have to, any place that you can go to avoid hitting someone or something and get stopped safely.

This takes practise and attention but, if you are continually thinking about an escape route and use it once to save a life, the time will be worth it. You will only die once but you can escape many times.

Many stories and songs have been written about truckers who have turned their wheels to avoid killing someone and lost their own lives doing it. They have become heroes, but you don’t have to die to miss killing someone; all you have to do is miss them. You can scrape a building, knock down a tree, run over a curb and flatten your tires but you and the other person will live through the minor bumps and scrapes.

An escape route may not be the smoothest place to drive or the quietest and it may dent your car some but having one will increase your chances of living longer by a big margin.

Once you have an escape route planed and someone moves into it, slow down or change your travel area to make another.

This will also increase your awareness of driving and who and what is around you and it will make you harder to hit.

Driving safely is not always driving very, very slowly but driving smarter.

102 THE POWER OF GOOD

102 THE POWER OF GOOD

God is good, His word is good and His son, Jesus, is good; God also says, in His word, that the earth is good, all that He created is good and mankind was made to be good. That’s God’s outlook on the situation and it hasn’t changed. It is going to be good because God is going to make it good. He is giving good and evil a chance to continue to be good and to change from evil to good.

In the end, God will keep all the good and remove, out of His presence, all that is evil.

God has described for us, in His word, what is good and what is evil; what He will keep, in His coming kingdom and what He will reject out of His kingdom and out of His sight.

That’s the way God said it will be and, now, He expects us to learn about Him and make this decision of good or evil for ourselves and be wherever we have decided to put ourselves in His future.

Now comes the hard part, we have a fuzzy idea about good and evil. Everyone has an idea about what is good and what is evil and they want themselves to be right without having to put a lot of effort and thought into it. People want a ritual ‘good’ that they can do so that they can get on with their busy lives and not have to pay attention to what or why they do the things that they do.

They find ‘experts’ to tell them what God expects and then they do it, thinking that, if it’s not right then, it’s the other persons fault, right? No! God made the responsibility for your decisions totally yours and will hold you accountable for them. He has put everything in your sight, area of hearing, area of logic and, basically, everything around you to help your mind make the right decisions. So, the wrong decisions come from within us; our lusts, desires and greed.

God’s word tells us what is good in the situations that are described there and why they are good. Many take the ‘what’ of the situation and think, practise and preach that that is God’s way, will and law; looking for that easy way so that they can feel secure that they are right and not have to worry about it again. Eve thought this way when she made her first mistake, too, and reinforced her ‘right’ wrong decision by giving it to Adam. He thought it must have been OK because the woman that God gave to him, to help him, had done it and nothing seemed to go wrong, so, it must be alright. [The old ‘monkey see, monkey do’ thing.]

Good, in God’s world, is not the ‘what’ that Jesus spoke about, but the ‘why’. If you love God, you will obey Him; asking His advice in every situation until you are familiar enough with His desire for you so that He can let you start making some of the decisions yourself.

Once you understand why He wants something done a certain way, then you can understand what He wants done. You then become a leader that does not need the rest of the crowd to agree or support you in your decisions because you know they are right from the one who is the master of right, God Himself.

This ‘power of right’ sets you free from all dependence on anyone or anything else; making you the power of yourself within yourself. This ‘power of right’ will stay with you as long as you stay connected to the source of this power and that is God, Himself.

13 MORE TIPS

13 MORE TIPS

Here are some more driving tips that you can practise after you get familiar with the vehicle that you are driving.

Watch as far ahead as you can but still watch for things happening close to you. Start at your car and look for things that are moving in your driving area. As you check off each moving [or object that is going to move] within your travel lane and eliminate it as a hazard to you, keep looking ahead as far as you can until you come to whatever object is directly ahead of you. As you are doing this, use your peripheral [side] vision to keep track of the moving objects close to you to see if they stop or speed up.

Also take note of any object that could start moving into your travel lane before you get past them. Focus on their tires [really, their hub caps] because this will give you the most visible warning that the car, bicycle, truck or, even, wheelchair is starting to move.

A car, sitting at a stop sign with the driver looking the other way will tell you it is starting to move by you seeing the hub caps starting to turn; also, but not as visible, the front of the car will rise slightly as the driver starts to accelerate from a complete stop. These are both warning signs that the driver is intending to pull out in front of you and gives you some time to start slowing down to avoid a dangerous close call.

Another tip is to expect the unexpected; don’t expect that pedestrian to stop when they reach the curb. Pedestrians have caught on to the fact that, if they step off the curb, then they have the right of way and they take it irregardless of how much danger is involved to them. [I know, I know. How can a pedestrian have the right of way when you have the green light? It’s because they are smaller than you, in your car, and, in a collision, they would be the most hurt. Law officials will tell you to give them the right of way and leave it up to the law to prosecute the jaywalkers.]

You have to be ready for everything and anything, when you drive, because the rest of the population does not seem to know or care where they are or what danger they are in. Pedestrians, bicyclers, other car drivers and truck drivers do not seem to know or care where they are going or where they are supposed to be travelling. Bicyclers travel on the wrong side of the road or on sidewalks; sometimes they will act like a bicycler and other times like a pedestrian.

There is also the surprise factor; someone in a line of traffic will blow their horn at someone they know, the person at the front of the line hears the horn and, without looking, thinks that the light has changed. They jump on the gas and are out in front of you before they realize their mistake; it is too late for them to stop which leaves them at your mercy. You have to be ready in case you have to stop to save their life.

101 THE LAW

101 THE LAW

The laws here in Canada, once they are empowered by legislature, are part of the law of our land and cannot be changed or negated except by another act of legislature. This is the same with God’s law; it cannot be changed or negated except by God.

Many have said that the old laws of God no longer apply to us today because Jesus gave us a new covenant but a new covenant is not a new law. Jesus has made a new agreement with us, His disciples, based on mercy and not conducts.

The Old Testament animal sacrifice was to show God that they were sorry for their sins and that they were willing, as animal lovers, to pay the price to obtain God’s forgiveness.

The animal sacrifice did not give them forgiveness; their willingness to give up something that they wanted and cherished, for God, obtained them forgiveness.

The rest of the law they were expected to keep as a continuance to obey the God that they said, by their actions, that they loved. The law of God is for the good of God, society and mankind; which good is the responsibility of every human being to work at keeping.

Jesus, our master, did not do away with the Old Testament law of God but, rather, He fulfilled that law to God, His father’s expectation. By doing this, His father gave Him the kingship of all of His, God’s, creation so that everyone in God’s kingdom must accept and acknowledge that Jesus is their king and master or they just won’t be there.

That’s God’s requirement and He expects us to know and obey that requirement or just not expect to end up in heaven. He is taking every available avenue to get this truth to every human being on this earth; He has His word published worldwide, He has His servants telling and showing everyone that they come in contact with and He will even send one or more of His angels to make this truth known to someone who wants to know the truth.

Jesus showed us that only love can fulfill God’s law; love for God first, love for Him second, as God’s son, and love for each other. This love keeps us telling others about God, Jesus and God’s mercy even when they don’t want to hear it and get angry with us because we know, and they don’t, that it is really for their good and God’s increase for us to continue and not for our own gain.

No one can say that they love God and/or Jesus and not keep the law that God gave in the beginning. All the law is to show God how much we love Him and is good for our mental and physical health. The only part that is not there now is the animal blood sacrifice which is the part that Jesus took on because we were confusing it as a ritual that we were supposed to obey instead of a personal sacrifice that we had to give up willingly.

Jesus, our master, will not expect anyone, who is not able, to keep the whole law of God even though that is what is required and expected; He will expect us to keep obeying each part that He introduces to us, when He introduces it to us because when He sees that we have progressed far enough to handle more, He will give us more to obey.

As our master, He will expect us to do the same things that He does, which is to please His father by obeying Him; showing God that we love Him and that we love and want to honour our master, Jesus, His son, by our obedience to Him.

Love willingly fulfills all of God’s requirements just to be with Him; the rewards are nice but secondary.

12 SOME TIPS

12 SOME TIPS

I thought that I would give out a few tips to help people improve their driving ability.

First; get to know your vehicle. You should be able to turn the lights on and off without looking for or at the switch; the same with the windshield wipers, the signal light, the door locks and power windows.

In tractor-trailer school they would teach you to glance at your instrument panel and in both left and right rear-view mirrors every 12 seconds. After you practice it long enough, it becomes a habit that you don’t have to think about but will keep you aware of what is happening behind you and what your vehicle is doing. When you check your instrument panel, look at your speed, if there are any lights on, on your emergency group, your battery charge and your oil pressure. [If you lose your oil pressure, you only have seconds to shut your motor off before it seizes.] Check your tachometer, too; over revving your motor will burn too much fuel for what you are doing. Use a higher gear if the tachometer is too high.

In a car, if you tach over 2000 you are using too much gas to pull away from stop signs and lights. Ease up on the gas pedal a little and keep your tach below 2000; that way your transmission will shift into a higher gear and you will go faster but burn less gas. By keeping your foot down on the gas, your transmission thinks that you are passing someone and will stay in a lower gear, making your motor rev higher before shifting into a higher gear.

Second; after you get to know your vehicle, get to know where your vehicle is in relation to what is around it. How close are you to the center line when you are driving down the road? Most road beds are 24 feet wide; 12 on your side of the center line and 12 on the other drivers side. Most cars are about 6 feet wide. This means that you have 6 feet to move from one side of your lane to the other. Seems like a lot of room but, if your in the center of your lane, you only have 3 feet on either side before you are out of your lane. That’s a little better than the length of your arm.

One way to check to see where your car is when you are driving down the road is to look in your rear view mirror at the road by your tires. How close is the center line? If you think that your tires are only 6 inches from the center line, you are too far to the left. [Remember that you are looking in a mirror and the rear tire is almost 6 feet behind you. What looks like 6 inches is probably closer to a foot or more.]

While cars are 6 feet wide, transports are up to 9 feet wide [I know, I know; they’re only supposed to be 8 feet 6 inches but the mirrors have to stick out beyond the sides to be able to see past the trailer and they are usually about 9 feet.] so transports need a lot more space travelling down the road and in the turns.

In my truck, I habitually travel 6 inches from the side marker line. This keeps me as far away from the rest of the traffic as possible but still gives me good solid road to drive on.

You can check how close you are driving to the edge by using your right side mirror and the side marker line beside your rear tires instead of the driver’s side mirror and the center line.

100 OUR WORDS

100 OUR WORDS

Most of us would say that we are honest and really believe that about ourselves.

Well, we would not tell the truth to a person who is dying because we don’t want them to get worse by worrying about death, or tell that person next door that their activities drive us nuts, when they ask about them, because we don’t want to be bad neighbours with them. We lie about knowing about what we have done to the police officer so we won’t get a ticket and have to pay for it because we really can’t afford to pay right now; simple little ‘white lies’ that don’t hurt anyone but will ‘help’ them or help us to stay out of trouble.

Irregardless of what we say or how we say it, our words tell others weather we are honest or not. To tell a lie to anyone, weather we think it would help them or not, is telling them that we don’t think that they are smart enough or mentally capable enough to handle the truth. We have made that choice for them; making ourselves better able than they to decide what they want to hear.

Don’t have the time for a long drawn out conversation? A little ‘white lie’ will get us past someone without hurting them, right? No! We have just told that person that they are not important enough, in our life, to simply say “I’m in a hurry and can’t talk right now, sorry.” but, that might commit us to another time and cut into our busy schedule, also.

We lie continuously to get away from people and don’t want to admit to ourselves that we are doing it.

It has become a part of our life to be a liar at times so we can get through our day. Our minds are kept so busy by work, relationships and play that we don’t have enough energy for them all.

In a world that has become so small because of our ability to communicate that we can know things that are happening around the world, we take on things that eat up our time and energy that have no direct bearing on our lives and pass off, with a lie, genuine friendship and generosity with a general and, now, thoughtless lie.

Because everyone is doing it [and, yes God help me, even me], we have accepted this as the way it is, so it must be acceptable by God, too; unfortunately for us, no.

God does not lie. He treats us like the person we are and gives us the respect that He would want us to give Him and everyone else and He tells us the truth, weather we want to hear it or not, so that we can make good, informed decisions about our own lives and the things that are our responsibility to decide.

Any lie is designed to take away from another’s life while it eases our burden; but, by telling them, we also create distance between ourselves and others; taking away our respect and trust for each other. By continually lying to each other, we have set others up to not believe the real truth, when we tell it to them, and our Christian witness falls on deaf ears because we have set it up that way. We are lying, like everyone else, so the truth is lost.

The only way we can get the truth to be believed is to stop doing what everyone else is doing and tell the truth ALL THE TIME; even when we don’t have the time, energy or ability to do it. Only when we tell the truth all the time, will our words be believed, so we had better start now because people will have to get used to hearing only the truth from us before they can learn to expect only the truth. Then, maybe, they will believe when we tell them the truth about Jesus.

11 ITS ALL THERE

11 ITS ALL THERE

You have learned the drivers manual and received your license; you know the basics but you’re afraid to go out because you’re unsure about remembering what you’re supposed to do. Don’t worry; it’s all there in front of you as you drive.

Along the sides of the highway there are signs telling you how fast to go, where streets, stores, towns, etc. are, when to slow down, what to look out for and, over head, there are signs telling you where you are, what lane to be in to get to where you want to go, what highway is going where and when to stop and when to go.

There is even help under you in markings on the pavement; solid lines and yellow areas that you are not supposed to cross or be in, broken lines that, if it is safe, you can pass or cross, arrows to go left, right or straight ahead.

In parking lots there are markings telling you where to park and where not to park, where the travel lanes are and entrances and exits to help you get in and out of there. There are signs to tell you when to slow down, how fast to go and where there are danger areas.

These signs, lights, markings, shapes and colors are all coordinated the same so they match each other and are the same no matter where you are or where you drive.

The older, more experienced drivers should also be obeying these signs and markings to help the more inexperienced drivers to observe and obey the driving rules and laws.

There is a lot of help and direction everywhere to help you on your way while you drive, so, don’t worry; we have all made our share of mistakes and slip ups learning to drive. We have all been where you are and done what you are doing; keep learning, watching and practising because it does not come without some effort.

You can become a good, safe driver but it takes desire, effort and time but the helps are all out there waiting for you.

99 SHARING

99 SHARING

We all want to share with others and we want them to share with us. Every day strangers will start a conversation with you or you will start one with them. A smile or a simple ‘hello’, just to have them acknowledge us and be acknowledged back means that they have accepted us and we them.

Our emotional needs require sharing and acceptance; our physically handicapped feel this lack every day. People are uncomfortable around them because they don’t know how to relate to them so they ignore them and hope that they will go away. To a handicapped person, their handicap is real and a part of them; by accepting this fact and talking about it, we accept them as they are and who they are.

We move through society looking for those, that we think are worthy, to accept us into their world. Acceptance and rejection do not have to be verbalized to be known; it can be felt and seen by our actions and attitude.

We share a small detail about our self with a stranger and the response dictates weather we think we are accepted or rejected. If we are accepted, we keep sharing and receiving as long as there is a positive, pleasant feeling about it. If it continues very long, we have a friend, lover, buddy, wife or whatever.

If we are rejected, we pull back and withdraw our feelings until that person is and remains a stranger.

We seek out and try to befriend those that we can gain from or those that we want to emulate. We wish to use our friendships to better our position in life so we try sharing with the wealthy, beautiful or charismatic in the hopes that they will accept us and share back so that we can get close to them and become one of their circle of followers.

We reject or string along for our pride those we think unworthy of our attention and friendship, hoping to do better or to impress the ‘more worthy’ crowd.

As we get more distant from each other, we find less and less sharing and more and more using. Women will give sex for affection, men will give money for things that impress others, kids become proud and arrogant because parents want to share their kids’ worlds but not give them any of their own and the individual is told that he is more important than the masses for others to gain from him.

Jesus shared all of Himself with everyone that wanted Him to so that He could become our friend; His personality, time, knowledge, power and parentage in the hopes that we would accept Him and share our lives with Him; our personalities, time, knowledge, strength and His parentage. Those of us that accepted became His friends and those of us that rejected Him went away from Him.

Sharing is a big part of intimacy; not just talking but listening and feeling the emotions of the other. Giving up our comfort zone to get personally involved with the emotions and feelings of others; understanding where they are and what they are going through and willing to pay the cost of sharing their world for their benefit; no matter what their social status is.

Give yourself away and share others lives; you might be pleasantly surprised.

98 SHUT UP

98 SHUT UP

That’s all you have to do and you can go on living with no problems and no one will bother you. Don’t tell people how good God is or how He loves them and everyone will accept you and make you feel like one of the gang.

Join with them and worry about your bills, your health and your day to day problems and they will see that you don’t have anything that they should be worried about.

Let them go to hell; they deserve it; after all God saved you and not them, didn’t He? If He wanted them to be saved, He would send some one to talk to them; one of those preachers or missionaries, so, because He didn’t, he must not want them to hear the good news that Jesus will forgive their sins and save them.

Ohhhh! I said it; now someone will take issue with me and say that God loves all mankind and will save them all. Soon there will be a big uproar and everybody will have a different opinion and I’ll be ridiculed for speaking about God’s salvation plan.

God doesn’t do that; why, if He did, He would have told me Himself, so, you must be lying.

I’d believe God, if He spoke to me but I won’t believe you. You’re just trying to control me.

So, you talk to God and He talks back; you think your something special and you’re trying to impress me with your stories. Well, I seen what you did yesterday and I don’t believe that was a Christian thing to do, so, God can’t be talking through you. You’re not perfect you know.

They will say anything to get you to shut up.

When you talk about God as if He were real, then you are disturbing everyone’s peace about their sins only being little ones so God will overlook them.

When you talk about God being your best friend and treat Him that way, you show the people of the world that He is real and that they have to deal with Him and His ‘life after death’.

What people don’t know about, they are afraid of and will get angry at someone who makes them afraid.

People talk about their problems in a hope that, by listening, you are sharing their problems and this brings them relief and seems to make their problem easier for them to bear. They don’t want help; they just want their problems to go away; so, when you offer them God’s way to help them, they don’t want it. You’re suggesting that they are weak and can’t handle their own problems.

By talking about what God has done for you, you show them how God helped you and that there is help for them, too.

Every problem that they have, you and I have had. God has helped us and is willing to help them but, unless they are told, they will never know God can help and will likely not think of help from God.

All we have to do is tell the truth about our God; what He has and is doing for us.

Speak up; God is worth it and the people NEED TO HEAR what we have to tell them.

10 LANE CHANGES

10 LANE CHANGES

There are two methods of lane changes; an old one and a new one.

First, the new one that is being taught in the driving schools and which I don’t use.

In the process of changing lanes, the first thing is to decide weather the change is really necessary. There are so many blind spots around your vehicle that a lane change is a fairly dangerous thing to do, so, if you don’t have to, don’t. It would be safer and wiser to drop back a couple of kilometres and hour and wait for your turn than to take a chance that you’re not comfortable with.

If you have decided that the lane change is needed; then check to make sure that you can legally change lanes where you are or just ahead of you, where you will be changing. [It is illegal to change lanes where there is a solid line between the lanes, through intersections and within about 30 meters on either side of an intersection.]

Having picked your spot to change put your signal light on to tell the drivers around you that you want to change lanes and look for a clear spot to move into in the lane that you are entering. By putting your signal light on in advance, you are asking permission, from the drivers in that lane, to allow you to merge with them. Make sure that you don’t just look in your mirrors for traffic in the lane that you are merging into but glance over your shoulder, too; there is a blind spot just behind your mirror that someone could be in and not show up in your mirror because they are ahead of the field of vision that the mirror is showing you.

The hope is that they will slow down and make a spot for you to move into. The reality that I see is that the drivers speed up to block the change so that you will have to change behind them. They don’t want you in front of them. It’s rude and leaves you slowing down looking for someone to let you in. [This should not have been a problem but, with everyone tailgating, they are travelling too close together for a safe lane change; which means that drivers changing lanes must now cut the other person off just to get into the other lane.]

The old way that I use is that I check my mirrors and look over my shoulder and find the spot that I can merge into before I put my signal light on. Then, when I have found my spot and am ready to merge into it, I put my signal light on to tell the driver behind me in that lane that I am coming over.

I start my move after a few blinks of the light [just enough time to let them realize that I am coming but not enough time for them to speed up and cut me off]

By picking my own spot to change, I can make sure that the spot is big enough for me without depending on someone else to back off. This is important because I know how big I am and how much room I need. I have taken the responsibility of my lane change on myself and not had to rely on someone that might not be experienced enough to be able to handle it.

After making the lane change, gradually back off from the driver in front of you until there is a comfortable distance between you. This not only is safer for you but also leaves a hole in case there is another driver desperately trying to merge into that lane.