My Truck's Emergency Brake is a Hunk of Oak

My wife and I began our married life in 1973 with a 1960 Ford Falcon as our mode of transportation. It was painted canary yellow and had one of those do-it-yourself black spray-on vinyl tops. The gas pedal was held on with a coat hanger wire, there was a hole in the floor board, and if you hit a bump too hard the driver’s side window fell off the track and disappeared down inside the door. So you always carried a pair of pliers in the glove compartment in case the window suddenly decided to open on its own – you simply grabbed the top edge of the window and yanked it back up. In Fargo, North Dakota it’s important to have your windows rolled up when it’s a minus 30 degrees. For any trip the checklist was: Gas…yep. Four tires…yep. Pair of pliers…yep. Ok we’re good to go. Shortly after our wedding my wife drove the car to the automotive insurance place to get it insured. At a stop light the window went kerthunk. If I remember correctly it may have been snowing that day. A nice guy offered assistance. When my wife told him where she was going, he simply said, “You’re gonna insure that?” We have been married for 33 years and now have three vehicles – one is a 2000 Nissan Sentra (driven all the time by my wife), one is a 1998 Chevy S-10 (only driven every other Sunday when the weather is nice – which isn’t too often in Duluth, MN), and the one I drive most of the time -- a 1995 Nissan pickup. A couple of days ago we went to the hospital to visit one of the church members. I was going to park on 4th Avenue East (called Cardiac Hill) but my wife advised against it (Duluth is a northern Minnesota version of San Francisco with all of its hills and steep streets). I agreed and we went to park where it was level. The emergency brake cable had broken a couple of years ago and so I haul around a piece of 4x4 oak about a foot long that serves as the “brake.” I have had to park on some pretty hairy streets and so I turn the steering wheel either all the way to the right or all the way to the left depending on the existence of a curb, get out, lock it up (who knows why), and then throw out the hunk of wood. (Just to sort of change the subject for a second…there is a restaurant out in the country about 20 miles from where we live called the Covered Wagon. When you park you pull up next to a hitching post [you know – where you tied up the horses in the old Western movies]. I have told my wife that someday I am going to tie a rope to the bumper of the car the next time we are headed to the Covered Wagon. When we get there I will get out and "tie up the car." I think it would be hilarious – she just shook her head.) As we drove home from the hospital, my wife said, “What’s that little yellow light on the dashboard next to that little red light?” I simply replied, “Oh that’s the check engine light – its nothing. It’s been coming on for three years now. And the yellow lights are not really warning lights, they’re more like suggestion lights.” We’ve only ever had one new car (a 1985 Plymouth Horizon) and that got attacked by a deer only five months after we had it. Hit it dead center. Blam! So much for the new car. So we pretty much just buy used vehicles (and I’m not too good at dealing with car salesman. Me to the salesman: “You said your daughter doesn’t have any shoes??? Well here, how about I pay you a thousand dollars more than what the sticker price is?”) Anyway, “stuff” rusts, rots, breaks, fades, gets stolen, loses its attraction, gets eaten by dogs, gets attacked by deer, blows up, melts, fizzles, loses it faddiness (is that a word?), etc, etc. The 1960 Ford Falcon probably met its demise several decades ago (I sold it to my sister when she needed a car – I can’t remember if I threw in the pliers). My in-immaculate-shape-only-a-few-thousand-miles-for-being-a-1998 Chevy S-10 will one day not be so immaculate. A friend gave me an old IBM ThinkPad laptop for free – it probably cost around $2,000.00 new -- my four year old grandson plays with it when he comes over. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven.” (Matthew 6:19-20). He also said in another place, “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul.” (Mark 8:36). I am not saying here that we shouldn’t take good care of our stuff. If you use your vehicle for a “dirty job” then you have a reason for it not being so clean, but having a filthy car isn’t a sign of being laid back, it’s a sign of laziness. But compared to the big picture of eternity, the scratch on the new car ain’t so important, the stain on the new couch isn't such a big deal, the antique that was broken won’t matter much in heaven. There is more important “stuff” to life. Souls are eternal and Hell is forever. Paul said in II Corinthians, “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (II Cor. 4:18). Would that God would “stamp eternity upon our eyeballs.” Seventy, eighty, ninety, even one hundred years of life is just a little blip along the scale of eternity. Make your decisions with that in mind…and above all give your life unreservedly to Jesus Christ! Don’t hesitate to ask Him to forgive your sins, to come into your heart and to become your personal Lord and Savior. Dan Vander Ark