I found one such device at an antique store some years back, but was disappointed when I got out to the car and discovered that my steering wheel was too big. The clamp wouldn’t fit, rendering my steering ball useless.

It wasn’t until years later that I discovered a new use for the ball. I had recently started a new job delivering mail for the United States Postal Services. One day, while having a bit of a difficult time maneuvering my mail truck through a maze of trash cans in an effort to get to peoples’ mail boxes, it occurred to me that my old steering ball would be just the thing to help me maneuver my truck along such obstacle strewn streets.

So, I took the ball to work the next day, clamped it on my steering wheel, and began a new era of driving bliss. For about two days. You see, my supervisor saw the ball and informed me that it must be removed.

Briefly, I tried to defend my use of the ball by saying that I didn’t know we couldn’t use them. After all, my postal worker’s handbook didn’t say I couldn’t.

And that’s when he said it. Such pure logic that Mr. Spock himself would have been forced to agree. “The handbook was written to inform you of the things that are acceptable. If the handbook doesn’t specifically address a subject, then you should assume that you can’t do it.”

I was stunned. That’s what the church of Christ has been preaching for years. “Speak where the Bible speaks. Be silent where the Bible is silent.  And all this time I thought people just didn’t get it. Apparently, people can get it; if we just keep preaching it.