Several years back, I was able to purchase the first car in my life that I’ve ever enjoyed. I didn’t think I’d ever buy a car that I enjoyed. My car was God’s means of deepening my faith. I learned to pray without ceasing behind the wheel—“Oh, Jesus, please, please, please, Jesus, please!” Well, this is embarrassing to admit, but this car made me feel differently. I don’t know if you’ve figured this out or not, but your car is not supposed to be the marker of your identity. I’d be sitting at a light, and a guy would drive up next to me, and he’d look into the car at me, and I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking, “I wish I was that man. I wish I was driving that car.” Well, at Christmas, my niece and nephew came to visit us--Troy and April, 11 and 13; they live in Orlando, Florida. We live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; they wanted to see a great Northeastern Christmas; they were hoping to see snow; it was 62° on Christmas Day--not much snow. But we decided we wanted to show them all the historical, Philadelphia Christmas sites. So the day after Christmas, I loaded the family into my ‘identity boat,’ and we drove around the city to see all the sites. And one thing I like about the holidays is that it’s a celebratory time, and there’s food out everywhere. I love how much of the glory of God in creation is edible, and we ate our way around Philadelphia. Troy, eleven years old, ate with the best of us. Well, at the end of the day, as an act of deep love for my family, I took them to Starbucks; and Troy, having eaten with the best of us, ordered a grande’ peppermint hot chocolate and a big rich brownie. He got into the car, and he’s now sitting in the front passenger seat next to me. And in order to get from where we were, to the house that we then lived in, we had to drive through Fairmont Park and drive on a road called Lincoln Drive. People from Philadelphia know what Lincoln Drive is like. Lincoln Drive is a road that does this; (arm motion to show weaving) it never stops doing this. Somewhere on Lincoln Drive, Troy got very quiet, and he said one fateful word, “Sick!” And then what came out of Troy next could not be described. It came; and it came; and it came; I think I saw his body getting smaller. (I’m thinking, “Jump out of the car or something.”) And then what I said next to Troy was just not true. I said, “It’s okay.” Oh, I’m not done yet. “I love you more than I do the car.” We got home, and we formed Troy’s body into a cup and got him out of the car, and another niece helped me clean up the seat--it’s a leather seat; I didn’t think it was too absorbent. I woke up in the middle of the night with a shocking realization that it was a ventilated seat, and it had holes in it! (You just had a treasure reaction.) This side of eternity, it’s very hard for you to keep what God says is important, important in your life. Things rise in levels of importance, way beyond their true importance. Or, let’s get closer to home. Let’s just say you’re the one shutting down the house for the evening, and you go into kitchen to turn out the kitchen light, and there on the kitchen counter, well-wrapped, is this beautiful fresh plump muffin. You look at that muffin, and you immediately name that muffin as your breakfast--yours and yours alone. And you think, “This is great. I can take a little extra time in the morning; I can chill in bed a little bit longer because I got this quick breakfast, cup of coffee, grab that baby, I’m out of there.” You go to sleep that night in the throes of your own ‘muffinism.’ You wake up a little bit later in the morning because you know that you’ve got this quick breakfast with ‘muffinlistic’ intention. And finally, a little bit later than normal, you walk downstairs; you throw open the kitchen door, and the counter is bare! You can’t believe it! And without moving an inch, you bellow, “WHO ATE MY MUFFIN, Muffin, muffin, muffin, muffin, muffin, muffin, muffin, muffin, muffin, muffin? Now think about this; it’s a hunk of dough with some blueberries in it, but it has commanded your emotion, and it’s setting the agenda for the way that you’re going to respond to people that you otherwise say you love. Don’t look at me like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Or let’s say you’re going to have a rather tense conversation with your husband or wife. You know it’s going to be a hard conversation; and you know you want to be an agent of unity, and understanding, and love. And so you do what we always do; you take the mental DVD; you put it in your brain, and you play the conversation ahead of time. You’ve done this. And you try to imagine all the things that other person will say, and you try to rehearse the things that you will say if they say those things, and you run several renditions of the conversation, trying to cover all the possible contingencies; you sort of choose your own adventure. Now you’re in the conversation, and you’re quiet of spirit; you’re soft of tone; the conversation is going pretty well. And then, all of a sudden, that person says something hurtful or dismissive to you. You can feel the emotional temperature changing. All of a sudden, you don’t want unity anymore; all of a sudden, you don’t want peace anymore; all of
Transcript: Session 5
WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?
5 1
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