Car Problems

I am plagued by car problems. They seem to follow me around. Not just normal ones either; they are usually squirelly and uncommon. Cars are becoming more and more complex as the years go by, and there will soon be a day when any powers as a mechanic that I have will be rendered useless by computers, but that won't stop me from trying. I both love and hate working on cars. The joy of completing a project and cranking the car up to feel that sense of accomplishment is matched only by the pain of seeing steam pour out from under the hood or turning the key and having nothing happen.

A car is much like life. Sometimes there is joy. Sometimes there is disappointment. Ultimately, the car, like your life, is on a steady decline until one day it will be dead (barring of course show cars that live in garages and people that would basically pay the price for a new car to replace the innards of an old one out of sentimental reasons (There is no parallel for this in life, sorry)).

It is unclear just how God works in the world. It is evident that he does interact with our lives, but to what degree? Is he active in making sure that you get the last corndog in line at the stadium? Is he also active in killing someone you love with a vicious disease? Is he choosing to let us have our own way on earth to our own demise? Is he controlling every decision we "make" to his own will? I have neither the intellect nor time to address these issues here, but it is important that we decide how to react to life.

I have found in my personal life that my gut reactions to events in life don't always reflect my personal beliefs in how God works. I have images of a God who is constantly giving and taking and who also gives us the ability to make decisions that actually change the world around us. Sometimes these two don't agree. I end up thanking God for something he may not have directly given to me or begrudging him for bad things that he may not have caused.

I have never really liked that passage in Job where he says that the Lord has given and taken away and then he praises him for it. I always thought that Job sounded like some kind of zombie, after losing everything because of God to praise him seems absurd. I thought that maybe it was out of some sense of duty, as if Job said, "God is still God so what am I going to do about it? I might as well praise him." That doesn't jive with how I believe that God wants us to worship him. If he wanted us to praise him for his power then he would have sent his son to conquer not to love and to die.

Ultimately, we can't understand the way that God gives and takes away, but the Bible does say that he takes care of us. This doesn't mean that he gives us what we think we need all the time. What God gives to us, rather, is a transformation by the renewal of our minds. Thus, the ins and outs of the workings of God are not up to us. They should not concern us as much as how we react to life.

At the end of the day, I love cars and working on them. I don't hate the problems or blame the car for them, rather I love it all. The same is true of life. Life is not good because good things happen to us, it is good because it is. It is good because a good God made it that way. We can know that it is good because when he comes into our lives, he changes things. Therefore when all the things that can go wrong do or when everything falls right into our laps, we can say, like the old hymn, that it is well with our souls. Love life.