Spinners

I was on my way back to the church after a wonderful lunch with my wife and son today (Isaiah now won’t stop moving unless he’s sleeping, and even then he doesn’t stop for long. His main attraction today was trying to grab our cups and sandwiches and pull them off the table) when I saw something I have seen many times before but always gives me a good laugh. I had pulled into the right hand turn lane and I came up beside what looked like an 85 Toyota Camry. It used to be maroon, but the paint was now faded into a pale red that looked like it was oozing out of the rust that dominated the car’s body.

Now I will be the last one to pick on someone for having an old rusty car. The best car I ever had was a 1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. That thing was a tank. That was back when they made cars out of metal, not recycled milk jugs and Tupperware. It was covered with more rust than the Camry I saw today and the power steering didn’t work, but I would trade my car in now to get that thing back if it would run. Sadly enough my parents gave it away to a family in town who needed a car (that’s not the sad part, that was good) and someone hit it about three weeks later (that is the sad part). It was a tragic end to a beautiful life.

Enough of my musings, back to the Camry. As I pulled alongside it, I looked at the wheels and noticed that they were shiny chrome spinners. (For those who don’t know, spinners are wheels that have pieces that keep spinning once the car stops. They are usually fairly expensive and are favorites of rappers and pubescent boys everywhere.) These wheels had to at least come close to equaling the value of the entire car!

Like I said at the beginning, this is not the first time I’ve seen this. People take crappy cars and put sweet rims on them. Like somehow with those rims people won’t notice the car!

I feel like we as Christians do the same thing sometimes (not put spinners on rusty cars, though I’m sure we do that too, but that’s not my point). We build really nice buildings, have great PowerPoint presentations, put on a good performance, and we hope that people won’t notice that we’re rude, unwelcoming, going through the motions, fake, and lifeless. But spinners won’t make a rusty Camry a Benz.