IMTS Global

MEMORIAL - On a Personal Note: We Fix Flats

My eyes couldn't help being drawn to a sign I recently encountered while in my travels. I had just passed one of those "Speedy/Jiffy or Whatever Lube Centers" when I noticed what I thought was a peculiar service also being offered. The sign simply read "we fix flats". Simple, unobtrusive, and yet with a definitive air that left me thinking, "If I had a flat, I would hobble into this station to have it fixed."

As I proceeded down the highway my mind drifted to the many "flats" I had encountered over the years. The various stages of my life, the places I was heading to, and those that were with me when they occurred.

I couldn't resist also making the analogy between this sign at a "Lube station", and the function of the church. Bear with me as I exercise some "Spiritual license".

Like this "Lube station", the church provides needed repair and "oil" for the weary. We exercise, and are exposed to a "multi-step" check-up each time we walk through the doors of our church. Spiritual leaders provide the check-up, allude to the many "points" of an accurate and thorough exam, and encourage the owner (or individual) to embrace a "self-check" mentality to avoid further problems, or worse more devastating ones (following the "owners manual" of course). Filled up, tuned up, and systems checked out, our customers (or congregants) are sent out to drive this "course of life we have been placed on" with new confidence.

But this interesting sign "We fix flats", seemed paradoxically both out of place, and yet so appropriate. I couldn't help but think about how that sign, and the service it represented, so appropriately describes the church's role. "Flats", it says it all, could we possibly come up with a better term for such a misfortune? Flats come at the most inopportune time. Have you ever noticed that? Usually we're in our "Sunday best", and thirty minutes late (its usually raining too). We're coasting along, and suddenly POP, swerve, stop, cry. But flats don't always occur like that. Sometimes there is just a slow, insidious leak taking weeks to demonstrate its destruction. Sometimes our tires are sabotaged (ever been in the city), flattened as an act of mischief without our knowledge. I've had valve problems, sidewall explosions, nail and glass punctures and just plain old worn out tires "giving up their spirit".

I've also been behind a 18 wheeler truck, and experienced a bonafide "truck blowout", watching the shrapnel and debris hail down on the unsuspecting, and leave a trail of devastation in it's path without even knowing it.

The Christian walk has so many parallels. Like those flats, we too experience defeat and become "deflated". Sometimes with explosive consequences in an instant we succumb to sin and are devastated. Sometimes we experience a "slow leak" and the very joy of our salvation erodes until we find ourselves crying out for comfort, or worse, we don't cry out at all. Perhaps aware of "something not right", we instead choose to ignore the loss of "volume" in our tires (or this case our walk or boldness for the kingdom) and suffer as both our endurance and joy vanish.

Sometimes our walk is equally sabotaged as the enemy comes in, identifies our "weakened sidewalls" and punctures us before we can react. Our paths are strewn with debris including nails, broken glass, and tire pieces from other fatalities beckoning us to run over them and experience similar fates. And finally, sometimes through the years of faithful service, we just plain old "wear out". Balding tires (careful now), worn treads, faithful years of service with little complaints, and perhaps little attention paid, we burn out, give up, and drop out. Paul described it this way;

2 Cor 4:8-9 (NAS)
	"...we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;..."

Yes, the parallels abound. We like the "Lube station" are also in the business of "fixing flats". And not just those of us in leadership. The entire body of Christ is enjoined to "fix flats". We are considered to be reconcilers, ambassadors, and are chief goal and aim is to bring the wounded to a Savior who is both "willing and able" to save and repair.

2 Cor 5:20 (NAS)
	"Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God."

Our encouragement and "repair strategy" is the same that our brother Paul offered when he declared;

2 Cor 4:16-17 (NAS)
	"...Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison..."

So how about you, fix any flats lately?

Coram Deo,

Jeff