A few years ago, I went skiing with a friend, Jay, from my high school days, who lives in the Bay Area. We didn’t want to ski on slush, so we went to Mt. Rose in Nevada, outside Reno. Mt. Rose is about 10,000 feet altitude.

As we were driving up the hill, I heard a siren really close by and looked in my rear view mirror. I saw those dreaded flashing lights  – the police car was directly behind me.

All of a sudden, a memory popped into my head of a time when Jay and I were driving, during a break from college, we decided to go on a road trip from Lincoln, NE to California, where we stayed with my grandmother in Pacific Palisades. This was about 30 years ago. As we were driving through Nevada on I-80, in my yellow Ford Maverick, I hadn’t noticed that the Interstate had ended and we were driving through a small town – at pretty much the same speed. A highway patrolman pulled me over and wrote up a speeding ticket for me. But that wasn’t enough; he felt compelled to give me a lecture about how I could have killed somebody driving that fast through town and it got me kind of angry. I barely had enough money for gas; I didn’t have enough for a speeding ticket too – it was about $80. I decided I wouldn’t pay it. I didn’t plan to be in Nevada ever again, so they could just try and hunt me down.

Now, 30 years later, a Nevada Highway Patrol car is on my tail with siren and flashing lights and I’m thinking the fugitive has been busted. I pulled over and the officer sped by and pulled over the car in front of me. (relief)

I thought I was almost on Reno 911.

All of a sudden, I remembered why I usually made a point to stay out of Nevada.

Guilt does that to you.

An event triggers a memory of past failure and your mind starts to go down that road. You think the trigger event is an early warning side and your sliding down the same slope of failure again – your relationship is going to end horribly – or you’re going to lose another job.

But, in Christ, that’s not true. We are forgiven. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is proof that Jesus has the power to forgive sins.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! – 1 Corinthians 5:17