Rusty. Old. Masterpiece.

September… already.  This past Tuesday night, my daughter and I took the dog for a walk, crunching on the occasional fallen leaf resting on the sidewalk. Fall will be here soon. 

Time flies bye, way too fast. My oldest son, hopefully, gets his driver’s license the end of this year. It’s crazy. For some time now, we were hoping to turn my grandmother’s car into his first. It is a 2004 Hyundai XG350. Never heard of it? Not surprising. That’s because they don’t make them anymore. They haven’t for a while.  In fact, they only made them from 2002-2005. Though the car is old, it is in pristine condition. It is your typical “old lady car”—used almost exclusively to go back-and-forth to church and the occasional trip to the grocery store.  To get it tuned-up and prepped for our young permit driver, we dropped it off at a nearby Hyundai dealership. You should have seen the faces of their workers when I drove that car into the garage. They clearly hadn’t seen one of those in quite some time. Truth be told, most of the mechanics were probably younger than the car itself!
 
Unfortunately, after several weeks under the mechanical microscope, it has been decided that the juice isn’t quite worth the squeeze.  Quite frankly the car is just too old to invest the time, effort, and money to keep it running.  Because the car is 20+ years old, and has sat relatively unused for many years, there are many repairs and servicing that are necessary. Things need to be replaced, flushed, and restored. However, the car has long stopped being manufactured; and Hyundai itself does not even make the parts for it anymore. Safety features are obviously outdated. And beyond the long list of what we know needs to be fixed, there are also unknown issues looming based on signs and sounds we are hearing from an aged engine.  Bummer. It would have been nice. A great first car. Practical and Sentimental. Can't beat the price. Plus, it seems like a safe assumption that my son would have been the only kid in school with a cassette deck in his car. How cool is that?! Alas, it is not to be.

Call up Kars-4-Kids.
​Our used car searching begins again.
 
Too old. Hidden problems. Aging parts. Too many issues. Broken. Falling apart. Outdated. Not worth fixing. Can you imagine if our Heavenly Father looked at us with this mindset? We would all be done for. Hopeless. Destined for the spiritual junkyard. But instead, God looks at each of us and calls us His own. He doesn’t give up on us. In the waters of baptism, He scoops up our aged pieces and broken parts to begin building us anew. We are a “new creation” the Bible reminds us (2 Cor. 5:17).  This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!  Our God knows that we are in rough shape; but He refuses to let us rust away. To Him, we are absolutely worth saving. So much so that He invests His literal blood, sweat, and tears. Just as He promised, and purely motivated by His grace and mercy, our God has made us new again (cf. Rev. 21:5).  Purchased at the cost of His own blood, we have been given a second chance. In spite of the wear and tear we have from life in a bumpy, sinful world, we have a God that has no problem pouring the necessary TLC we need to endure. 

​We have that new-car smell again.  We are renewed, refurbished, and ready for the road!
 
“God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself.” (C. S. Lewis)
 
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and to carefully observe My ordinances.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27)