Wednesday, June 9, 2021

The Car that Teaches Us to Pray

 

Wednesday, June 9, 2021

Never stop praying.  1 Thessalonians 5:17

As the old saying has it, if I had a nickel for every time that car broke down I’d be a rich man.  More accurately, I’d at least have an extra hundred bucks in my pocket, if you added-in the money saved on repair parts.

It didn’t matter whether it was a Ford, Chevy, or Dodge, it was mine – and it was my first – and I had mobility.  (Well, up until I got at least a mile from home and found myself stranded…again.)

One night that Oldsmobile taught me to pray like an apostle…without ceasing!  I’m fairly certain memory serves me correctly, that I was on my way to work; so this wasn’t a frivolous joy ride.  It was dark, no street lights, and it was that less-travelled road.  The muffler hitting the pavement was the first clue things were happening pretty much in their usual order – leave home, pause, get stuck…again!

A brief look with the flashlight told me this was going to be another day in paradise.  An hour later paradise included three skinned knuckles, elbows aching, shoulders refusing to lift one more time, and a muffler still hanging down on the ground.  It was time for serious help.  So I began praying, Lord, help me with this thing…I don’t like it here in the dark, on the ground, and that thunder in the background is getting closer.  I promise….(well, never mind all the things I promised God that evening – I’m sure I didn’t follow through with most of them).

The prayer was followed by an overwhelming sense of guilt, the kind a teenage boy (or a 74-year-old man) feels when he’s praying for a two-ton car to begin cooperating with his feeble mechanical skills, and the boy (or old man) hasn’t checked-in with God in months…or years.  It’s like remembering that rich uncle when you’re down to your last dollar…you haven’t even called him the past decade, but now you need what he’s got, and you’re ready to get chummy…even downright nephew-ie, as you ask him for a “loan”.  As in a woeful prayer life, you haven’t exactly been nephew-ing without ceasing, but you’re going to ask anyway.

Well, that night afforded the strangest response from God – two really.  The first was when I picked that car muffler off the ground one more time, and CLANK – it went right back in place.  A few thousand wraps with the roll of wire I kept in the trunk to hold this behemoth Olds-98 together, and there you have it…ready to roll!  The second response from God was when I actually said the words out-loud on the back roads that night…thank you, God.  I really was thankful, but God’s next words were what changed everything for this non-church-attending, sometimes-believing (but never in a fanatical sort  of way), teenager.  I know I didn’t hear the words in an audible way, like Moses at the burning bush, but He seemed to speak directly to my heart without words.  I know it was God, because Russell, as slow on the uptake as he was around God-things, could not have come up with this; the Lord said thus:

It’s all good, son…this time.  But, listen…if you keep practicing prayer like you do maintenance on your car, your voice is going to fade on this end.  Russell, I don’t want our relationship to fall apart like that jalopy…so how about we talk more often?

For You Today

It’s like my late friend Donna used to say, I got so much to talk to Him about, I just never get around to saying ‘Amen’. 

If you haven’t heard from Heaven lately, it may be that jalopy needs a little TLC.  So, maybe it’s time to get with it before the prayer muffler hits the pavement?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!   


[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

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