Bache - translation: Pothole

Kyle and I were given a small truck to use while we were in Puerto Vallarta, this was such a blessing. You get to experience the true Mexican way of life when you have to drive yourselves around. On Monday while driving from the church to the compound Kyle commented on the fact that with the resources and technology that is available it is a wonder that they haven’t resurfaced the roads yet. I told him that it was an easy way to keep the speeders slow. Most of the road in the area IF they are paved, are paved with bricks or rocks and are not the smoothest things you have ever driven on and the foundation underneath is extremely sandy so that when the rains come and they come each year the foundations get washed away and pot holes (Bache in Spanish) appear.

During our drive around PV we experienced potholes of just about every size and shape. Most were fairly shallow with sloping sides so you only needed to slow down allowing you to continue without much effort as you were able to drive through them. Others were deep with steep edges so that if you didn’t drive out and around into the on coming lane and actually drove into it you might lose a tire or worse yet break an axel, and then there were the ones that were large enough to loose a car in it if you didn’t detour around them and go a different direction.

As I thought more on the potholes that day it came to me that we have “bache” in our lives. Many a writer, including the authors of the Bible refer to our lives as traveling along a road. We all are traveling along the road of life and then suddenly with or without fault of our own, circumstances come into our lives to cause us to need to slow down, to drive out of our lane into on coming traffic or make a total detour to avoid the potholes or circumstances of life.

These potholes could be bad or they could even be good things;
-things like our careers or loss of one;
-our families or lack of one;
-our obligations,
-sickness,
-our lack of confidence or over confidence,
-traditions, routines and goals.
When a circumstance arises or a pothole develops in our ‘road’ we need to learn from and allow our character to be developed during them. It says in Psalms 139: 3 that the Lord knows our paths. How we react to these Potholes determines our character. We can slow down and seek God, we can steer clear of the impending danger, or if needed we will make changes in our lives and take a different road.

When the bache or potholes of life happen, and they will, we need to remember that God causes all things to work together for His good, Rom 8:28.

So I challenge you to praise God for the potholes in your life.