Licensed to pray. (Odds & Ends).

I hope I won't get into a car accident someday because of my fascination with religious messages on license plates. It's not just looking for them that distracts me from traffic. Finding pen and a scrap of paper, or an empty Starbucks cup, on which to scribble the text is even more dubious for defensive driving. Nonetheless, I take my chances, firmly believing that multitasking is not gender-specific.

When ACTS II 4 passed me on the interstate, I gave myself the homework assignment to check out this license plate's chapter and verse. I don't carry the Good Book in my car for on-the-spot reference checks--a fact that the spirit of Saint Christopher probably applauds. At home I read in Acts 2:4, "They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in foreign languages as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech." Perhaps the driver was on fire with the Holy Spirit as he sped past me.

HNR THE 1, which I spotted on a parked car, probably referred to the divine, but whether that was the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Native American variety was impossible to figure out. Or maybe the owner of this car, perhaps more self-impressed than impressive, had only himself or herself in mind.

Unlike the previous plate, THK U LRD is pretty straightforward. The seven letters--the maximum allowed for individualized license plates in my state of Illinois--use creative spelling effectively. Another plate, G ZUS also features creative spelling, but whether it is a bowed-head prayer or a heads-up expletive neither I nor my neighbor Randy Gibbons, who told me about this plate, know.

FRM GOD sent my imagination into overdrive. Is this a theological reflection on all creation? Or does this driver think that the automobile, particularly his car, is from God?

MS DEVIL moves in another direction. Is this owner announcing to the world that she is one of the fallen angels following in their tread marks? Or maybe her meaning of devilish is that of a trickster rather than the incarnation of total evil. Even though I did not spy a pitchfork in the back seat, I didn't stick around to find out.

SAY GOD 1 is yet another ambiguous plate. Does "1" mean the numeral or should it be read as "won"? If it is the latter, either God has some explaining to do or, more probably, the license plate creator has some explaining to do.

Another numeric plate, BLSSED 4 might be praising the Beatles, overlooking a four-leaf clover, repopulating the trinity, or some other muddled message.

When I saw the license plate PHAROAH, on a shiny black Mercedes, I first thought of the prosperous and powerful rulers of Egypt and the 12 plagues wrought against one of them by Moses. Then I noticed the spelling was incorrect. The pagan titan of oppression in the Book of Exodus is spelled Pharaoh. So did the driver spell poorly--like Thomas Edison and Peter Gilmour--and not bother to use spell check, or has this plate's significance eluded me?

Maybe one of these years I'll decide to get one of these personalized license plates. Just to be different, I'll probably avoid an explicitly religious plate.

ODD N END would do nicely.

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.