Leader's Insight: Overhaulin'

This is a slow morning - but a great one to read something of inspiration - FROM SOMEONE ELSE. While doing my devotions today and preparing for the next steps of renovation I came across this great article from Gordon Macdonald. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Today's schedule - second coat of paint on the cupboards, beginning tiling of the shower and speak at a Senior's Luncheon.

PML

Leader's Insight: Overhaulin'
Gordon MacDonald on rest for the high mileage believer.
by Gordon MacDonald, Leadership editor at large

From my journal:
My first automobile, purchased as a college student for $200, was a 1949 Ford with a ten-year history and 100,000 miles on its odometer (in those years odometer mileage could be quite unreliable).

I would soon learn that the car had a way of presenting me with fresh problems every day … on a random basis. It seemed to taunt me like a fickle horse.

Starting the car was not dissimilar to rolling dice. Every sixth or seventh time, the starting motor yielded a series of clicks but no action. This tended to happen more frequently when I was in a desperate hurry. My solution was to park the car at the top of a hill near where I lived each evening so that, the next morning, I could push the car down the hill, getting it rolling fast enough to pop the clutch and coax the engine into motion. (Does anyone know what popping the clutch means today?)

The Ford's radiator was a slow leaker, meaning that I had to fill it with fresh water each morning and follow up with subsequent refills every forty miles. Because I could not use anti-freeze during cold weather months, I wedged pieces of cardboard in front of the radiator to keep the car from freezing up. Differing temperatures, of course, meant assorted sizes of cardboard.

The electrical system was quirky, and the headlights tended to blink on and off even when it wasn't Christmas. You don't want to hear about the brakes (required pumping), the dysfunctional gas gauge, the weak battery, and the radio, which only played if you hit the dashboard in the right place.

The old Ford returned to my memory recently when I began to brood on the nature of human brokenness, a word we use sometimes to describe the sinful condition of people. I had several individuals in mind, of course, whose behavior seemed as random and as unreliable as that cursed car. But my reverie was interrupted, as usual, by an inner Voice suggesting that a more profitable meditation might be a bit of self-examination.

There must have been a day when a thrilled car-buyer drove that brand new Ford away from a dealership. Imagine a family enjoying that first ride, the new car smell, the purr of the engine, the brilliance of the shiny paint job. But then jump to the days when it came into my possession.

What happened? What had the years done? Who had failed to care for that now-pathetic piece of machinery?

Let's face the facts. I am that '49 Ford with lots of mileage. If I ever had a new-car smell to me, it had to be the day my mother birthed me (but let's not take this analogy too far). Today, however, I possess all the dents, noises, and idiosyncrasies of a vehicle deserving of the junk yard.

You never know which one of my systems is going to be a non-starter. Each day I require fresh maintenance, new parts, and a driver who understands my peculiarities. Absent such care, I will in fact be sold for parts before long. But with a reasonable amount of attention, I still have a few miles left in me yet.

This is the point our Lord is making when he says, "Come to me, you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." He might have said, "Come to me, you who are leaking oil, rusting out, and in need of new bearings. I'll give you an overhaul."

Current reading: My friend, Larry Crabb, has a new book out, The Pressure's Off. I know some people who can profit from a book that talks about weariness—not me, of course. Some good other summer time reading is Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment, which describes President Roosevelt's first 100 days in the Presidency way back in 1933. Good leadership commentary here.

A Provocative Line or Two:
But trained men's minds are spread so thin,They let all sorts of darkness in;Whatever light man finds, they doubt it;They love not light, just talk about it.
John Masefield (The Everlasting Mercy)

From the biography of John Henry Jowett
"We leave our places of worship, and no deep and inexpressible wonder sits upon our faces. We can sing these lilting melodies, and when we go out into the street our faces are one with the faces of those who have left the theater and the music halls. There is nothing about us to suggest that we have been looking at anything stupendous and overwhelming. Far back in my boyhood I remember an old saint telling me that after some services he liked to make his way home alone, by quiet by-ways, so that the hush of the Almighty might remain on his awed and prostrate soul. That is the element we are losing, and its loss is one of the measure of our poverty, and the primary secret of inefficient life and service." (This said—give or take—a hundred years ago. How might the man have expressed himself if he had lived today?)

Pastor and author Gordon MacDonald is chair of World Relief and editor at large for Leadership.