A Chronology of Cars

Life markers are a wonderful tool to map out our personal journeys. Things such as a weddings, birth dates, graduation dates, and even Hurricane Katrina. We also have a chronology of cars. Our chronology is much like the Jews' chronology in that God says "Remember!" such as "Remember when you were slaves in the Land of Egypt and I delivered you." Unfortunately human nature, especially as it relates to God, is one of amnesia. It is hard to remember the blessings of bygone days as today's worries crowd and vie for your attention. This is part of our family's effort to remember.

Being burden to attend seminary, we acted in faith starting in 1999-2000 despite our pockets being empty. Since then and because of our incredible lack of monetary funds, it has pleased God to provide us five vehicles in a row to meet our needs (Matthew 6:25-34). All five vehicles given to us. Our disclaimer is that God does not owe it to us to provide our vehicles. This idea would be disingenuous to all those believers who are starving throughout the world today and in centuries past. We recognize it as God's pure mercy and grace and it amazes us as a family as much today as in days past.

All my statisticians out there do the math for me of the likelihood of one family being given five vehicles in a row - all running well. I think your equation will point to a supernatural agent.

Here is our chronology:

1. 1998 Mazda 626 - Date Given: August 2000; died in car crash .Given by a family leaving to do missionary work in Romania for a year. Even though they were coming back to the states they gave this car to me after hearing about my need of a vehicle in order to move to N'awlins to begin Seminary. I received the vehicle a few days before I had to leave.

2. 1988 Ford Escort - Date Given: 2002; given to charity. While in seminary, someone ran a red light and slammed into the Mazda leaving me without a car. After our marriage, Rachelle and I survived with one car for a while. However, being a pastor intern began to pose problems to our schedule of school and work along side ministry. I asked a wonderful couple at our church about the possibility of buying their Ford Escort. The following Sunday they gave it to us knowing we really didn't have the money to purchase it.

3. 1999 Pontiac Montana - Date Given: 2004; still with us! A few years and two children later we discovered a real problem as the Escort formed an oil leak. Our problem? Packing our children (with car seats) and other items every weekend to go an hour and half a way to do ministry in a small rural church in Louisiana. Some of our wonderful friends parted with this wonderful van; although, they had real use of it too with seven kids! This van continues to be an amazing blessing to us to this day. We're praying for another ten years from it.

4. 1990 Toyota Camry - Date Given: September 2005; going to a charity soon. After Katrina we thought we had lost our Cavalier (which Rachelle bought before we got married - it is the last car we bought and that was over a decade ago!). A wonderful family in Richmond heard about this and gave us their son's car (he got another one).

5. 1998 Honda Accord - Date Given: July 2009; still breaking in this speedster. Pray I won't get a ticket. :-) I admit that I've always wanted a Honda. We had our brothers and sisters advocating for us before God's throne room. A very dear family to us had an interesting conversation recently. One said she thought she would just donate her car this year instead of using it as a trade-in for a new car. Here we are driving in a car that provides more than we need. Thank you God!

6. HA! HA! You thought I was done! WRONG! 1998 Chevy S10 - Date Given: March 2009; returned in July 2009 to its joyful and gracious owners. This last time we were in desperate need for a vehicle as the Toyota finally conked out on us. With a penance to our name, and a job that requires a presentable, drivable vehicle a couple loaned us their practically brand new S10 for almost five months (it had less than 13,000 miles on it when we borrowed it). Did I mention I had a hit-n-run while driving this truck. Well - it was like new. :-(

Here is our chronology, meant to encourage and embolden you in your walk with the Lord. We look to it as a reminder as we walk in faith into a future where there are many questions concerning from where our provisions will come. God has already told you - the world is his and all that is in it. Like you, we stand on the edge of eternity looking forward. Little tastes such as this, while completely incomparable to the infinite joy we will experience and grow in days eternal, still give us a view to that which we exult in and desire.

Instead of 12 steps try 4!

STEP ONE:

Till the day he [John Newton] died he never ceased to be amazed that, as he says at age 72, "such a wretch should not only be spared and pardoned, but reserved to the honour of preaching thy Gospel, which he had blasphemed and renounced . . . this is wonderful indeed! The more thou hast exalted me, the more I ought to abase myself."[68] He wrote his own epitaph:

JOHN NEWTON,
Clerk,Once an Infidel and Libertine,A Servant of Slaves in Africa,Was,by the rich mercy of our Lord and SaviorJESUS CHRIST,Preserved, restored, pardoned,And appointed to preach the FaithHe had long laboured to destroy,Near 16 years at Olney in Bucks;And [28] years in this church.

When he wrote his Narrative in the early 1760s he said, "I know not that I have ever since met so daring a blasphemer."[69] The hymn we know as "Amazing Grace" was written to accompany a New Year's sermon based on 1 Chronicles 17:16, "Then King David went in and sat before the Lord, and said, Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that thou hast brought me thus far?"

Amazing grace! How sweet the soundThat saved a wretch like me,I once was lost, but now am found,Was blind but now I see.

The effect of this amazement is tenderness toward others. "[The 'wretch' who has been saved by grace] believes and feels his own weakness and unworthiness, and lives upon the grace and pardoning love of his Lord. This gives him an habitual tenderness and gentleness Spirit. Humble under a sense of much forgiveness to himself, he finds it easy to forgive others."

He puts it in a picture:

A company of travelers fall into a pit: one of them gets a passenger to draw him out. Now he should not be angry with the rest for falling in; nor because they are not yet out, as he is. He did not pull himself out: instead, therefore, of reproaching them, he should shew them pity. . . . A man, truly illuminated, will no more despise others, then Bartimeus, after his own eyes were opened, would take a stick, and beat every blind man he met.[1]

STEP TWO:

Philippians 3:4-11 “If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: 5 circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless. 7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, 10 that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

STEP THREE:

1 Chronicles 16:12 2 Remember His wonderful deeds which He has done, His marvels and the judgments from His mouth,

Ephesians 2:11-13 Therefore remember, that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called "Uncircumcision " by the so-called "Circumcision," which is performed in the flesh by human hands-- 12 remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

STEP FOUR:

[1] From John Piper's sketch on John Newton. Read John Piper’s entire biographical sketch Here.