Your hobbled, well-aged vehicle sits at home in mechanical silence awaiting a string of extra payday deposits to cure its illness, which has left you constantly thinking about money and transportation with a level of seriousness that could be considered worry. You’ve begun to formulate plans for alternative ways to get to work until you can accumulate the funds to finance the repair.
Maybe you’ll have to start out a little earlier and figure out the public transportation system; piecing together a walk-ride strategy. This will most likely be time consuming and it will require you to come in close contact with the bag ladies and winos you normally pass by on a daily basis.
Or maybe one of your friends who lives nearby would be willing to pick you up, but who do you know that would understand your need for complete silence in the morning and the scheduled stop by Starbucks for that triple, venti, half sweet, non-fat, caramel macchiato, that you must have or the day will be ruined? What friend can you trust with that kind of personal information about your mandatory morning rituals?
Walking, or riding your bike, although possible, would require lots of advance prep and you’d have to find a place to shower before clocking in, not to mention that you’d have to bring extra clothes each day.
A daily Uber ride may become a competing expense and slow down your ability to save the money you’ll need to save for the car repair.
The inconvenience of all the scenarios makes your head spin but you gotta do what you gotta do, and you gotta work. Imagine there was an opportunity to be blessed with every one of the alternatives. Imagine that God was waiting to improve your life and the only way He could get your attention was to sideline one of the things in your life that took your attention away from Him: in this case, your car. Many of our inconveniences are only temporarily inconvenient before we discover the blessing that was wrapped inside them.
What if God wanted you to learn the public transportation system so that you could observe and appreciate the machinations of a living, breathing city? Or maybe He wanted to expose you to the plight of the bag ladies and winos and other unsavory characters so that you could see the fine line between their insecurities and your selfish moods swings; the similarities in their hopelessness and your self-pity; the sliver of hope that separates your will to fight from their total surrender.
What if He wanted you to share time with a friend on the way to work so that they could pray with you about some of the things in your life that are not working out the way you thought they should? Or maybe the friend is the one in need and your listening ear is their way out of a deep depression. Maybe your Starbucks habit is a way to open them up to talk about some of their habits without shame.
What if God’s point was to make use of some of the items you already possessed but had lost interest in? Like that bicycle that accumulates spider webs in the back corner of your storage. What if God was so concerned about your fitness that He got you out of your car and onto your bike so that you could discover the benefits of fresh air and sunshine and in the process you’d discover bike shortcuts that negate the time you normally spend pounding your fist in traffic?
What if the Uber rides exposed you to a whole new approach to morning traffic and opened many alternative paths to travel to work? What if the contact you truly needed to start your own business or get into grad school turned out to be someone you shared an Uber ride with? What if it turned out to be your future husband or wife?
Maybe your broken down car is an opportunity to make human contact beyond the prearranged, scheduled events of your normal day. What if that was the way God let people know that He was real and that He wanted to be involved in our lives? What if God placed obstacles and detours in our paths in order to lead us to what we could never find for ourselves? What if He showed us how minor our struggles really are by blessing us with alternatives? What if He operated that way? He does!
“My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” James 1:2-4 (NKJV)
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