The Crossover

When was the last time you were stuck in a traffic jam? Frustrating wasn’t it. Especially when it was due to one or more lanes being closed on the freeway.

There is a unique freeway construction technique that is used to lessen gridlock. Road crews temporarily pave an access road right across the median or middle of the freeway. This diversion allows traffic to completely switch sides. The lanes just cross over to the other side of the interstate. This is sometimes called a crossover.

By allowing entire sections of freeway traffic to just cross over the median of the freeway, onto what first appears to be oncoming traffic, gridlock is lessened. It feels kind of weird driving on the opposing side of the freeway, especially when both directions of traffic are sharing the same section of the road. Closing a vacated section of freeway allows road crews time to finish the road construction or repair without being impaired by the constant flow of traffic. The crossover is possible because although traffic is going in different directions, the two separate roads run parallel to each other.

Now I want you to visualize two entirely different roads. Picture in your mind two different roads running parallel to each other. I will explain what the roads mean later, for now just picture two stretches of road running side by side or near each other. Maybe it’s the I-15 freeway and the Legacy Highway.

Now that you have pictured two roads running parallel to each other, picture a point along both roads where you create a temporary crossover. It becomes a place where you just switch from I-15 to the Legacy Highway.

Trains make similar switches. Trains change tracks at similar junctures. Even though the train tracks may run parallel to each other, two tracts are always necessary so that trains can travel in both directions at the same time. An accidental cross over may cause one train to ram head on into another train because both trains were traveling on the same set of tracks.

Medians can help keep us on the right road. Instead of a yellow line that divides a two lane highway, medians are often used to divide a freeway. Medians that divide freeways separate opposing travel lanes and reduce the chance of head collisions. Although accidents can be prevented, collisions still occur when drivers lose control of their vehicles, for whatever reason, and cross the median striking into oncoming traffic.

Some freeways have rumble strips to help prevent accidents. A rumble strip is a feature installed on a paved roadway shoulder near the travel lane. It is made of a series of indented or raised elements intended to alert inattentive drivers through vibration and sound that their vehicles have left the travel lane. On divided highways, they are typically installed on the median side of the roadway as well as on the outside (right) shoulder. It is hard to estimate how many accidents have been avoided because the rumble strips helped warn drivers and passengers that the automobile they were traveling in was drifting off the road.

When we think of right and wrong or good and evil we often picture roads going in opposition directions. But sometimes right and wrong or good and evil are parallel roads headed in the same direction, separated only by a median. Daily we may frequently cross over and cross back without really even noticing a shift in our steering. Without any oncoming traffic to surprise us, we might drive for a long stretch before realizing we goofed and got off track.

Crossovers in our lives can be subtle. Crossovers in our lives can be so subtle that sometimes the shift in the road occurs and we don’t even know when have changed lanes. We can’t tell we are off course. We haven’t wrecked. We haven’t really drifted off the road and into a ditch or onto a shoulder because we are still driving on what appears to be a very real road. If we don’t cross back over at an appropriate juncture, however, then getting back on tract may become more difficult if not impossible. This means at some point there needs to be another crossover point, at a location further down the road, to get back to the right side of the road.

The truth is that light and darkness are, more often than not,parallel roads. We switch from Legacy to I-15 throughout our journey. Without help of the Light of Christ and the Holy Ghost, we may shift roads and lose our way. Our understanding of light and darkness is central to our avoiding getting lost along the way.

The good news is that we can receive direction in our lives. And we are in charge of the steering. We have control of the wheel. We just have to learn the rules of the road.