I happened to look down at my odometer today and saw my little ministry-provided 2002 Focus was turning 80,000 miles. Now, I realize that this milestone may not be a "big whoop" for many of you. I know a few people that have that many miles on a two-year-old car and also have met people that have well over 200,000 miles on their car...but for me, it's a milestone.
You see, for most of my adult life, I was a Ford employee. Ford and "Generous Motors" our rival across the freeway in Detroit were both known for providing good company benefits including great opportunities to buy, lease and drive new cars. As a result, our family always had pretty new cars. When I left the company I turned in two new cars that my wife and I drove and also called my daughter and had her turn in her Ford Explorer at the local Ford dealership in Illinois.
You see, for most of my adult life, I was a Ford employee. Ford and "Generous Motors" our rival across the freeway in Detroit were both known for providing good company benefits including great opportunities to buy, lease and drive new cars. As a result, our family always had pretty new cars. When I left the company I turned in two new cars that my wife and I drove and also called my daughter and had her turn in her Ford Explorer at the local Ford dealership in Illinois.
While it was always fun getting a new car, sometimes it was a little ridiculous. Back in the late 1980's, Ford had a small problem selling all of the cars we built (a reoccurring problem actually) and Ford company car control was "turning" the sales cars in the fleet, two and three times a year. As a result, I had three different 1989 Lincoln Continentals in a twelve month time frame. I remember loaning one of them to my Pastor and his wife on a couples retreat and he confessed later that he enjoyed driving it but intentionally parked it a block away so no one would accuse them of living "high-on-the-hog".
So, my having 80,000 miles on a great-running, nice looking silver Ford Focus is kind of a milestone for me. Most of my friends would understand and certainly agree that driving a five-year old compact car doesn't make you feel any less of a "success" than if I you were driving a new Lincoln Continental (they are Fords after all).
I'm reminded of that verse in Psalm 37: 25, "I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread." This entire Psalm is a response to that often asked question,"why do the wicked prosper and the good suffer?" Psalm 37 answers in verse after verse, that the present situation is only temporary--God will untimately reverse things, rewarding the good and punishing the wicked.
The thing that I like is that God can also reverse your thinking. God will bless you and allow you to understand that He has provided everything for you to enjoy and that our focus (get the pun?) is to be on the people we get to love and care for and not the things that are strictly material, and will ultimately just rust away and really don't matter.
