Another Lap

Since childhood I've been attracted to all things mechanical, especially automobiles (or "motorcars" as our British friends call them). My first car was a used 1962 Corvair. I got mine before Ralph Nader decided he needed to protect us from them. It was light green with tan vinyl upholstery. The Corvair provided me with my first opportunity to tune and care for an automobile. It had fancy wheel covers, a tachometer on the dashboard, and a green 6 ball for a gearshift knob. Of course it had dual glasspack mufflers so it sounded pretty bad, but with only 102 horsepower its bark was much worse than its bite. In 1967, with my Corvair as a trade-in and with money saved from working every summer and Christmas break, I was able to buy my first new car - an Oldsmobile 442. With over 360 hp, its bite was substantially larger.


I've often dreamed of driving a Formula 1 race car. How cool would it be to fly through the streets of Monaco in a McLaren-Mercedes revving at 18,000 rpm? I've always thought that the life of an F1 driver like Juan Fangio, Graham Hill, Ayrton Senna, and Michael Schumacher would be glamorous and exciting.


With the arrival of a new year and a new decade, God has reminded me that my life is a bit like a Formula 1 road race. The faster I drive, the faster each lap (and each year) goes by. I sometimes seem to be going so fast that the scenery along the course is just a blur. The faces of those standing alongside the track are all but indistinguishable. My grandmother knew what she was talking about when she told me that the older you get, the faster each year goes by.


This month I have felt God asking me to trade my McLaren-Mercedes for something much slower, maybe even a bus so others can go with me. I think He wants me to look into the faces along the course and to even take some of the side roads off the track. He has shown me that the faster I go, the more difficult it is to follow the last half of Jesus' commandment - to love our neighbors as ourselves. I think He's trying to tell me that this "love" of which Jesus speaks is much more than just the passive opposite of "dislike." I need to do a better job of actively sharing His love with those in my community. My prayer for 2010 is to have a lighter accelerator foot and better vision so that I can recognize those daily opportunities to share the love of Jesus, and the courage from the Holy Spirit to stop and share rather than just race on by. Any riders?


An ex-Michael Schumacher wannabe