The Beginning

So I bought a fixer-upper.  Usually when people do this they are talking about houses.  I, on the other hand, bought a car that is a fixer-upper.  Calling it a fixer-upper is kind of generous.  I should say that I thought it would be a simple little fixer-upper.  I wasn't looking to do a complete overhaul or a body-off restoration, but here I am with a rotten car with holy floor boards, two old coats of paint, and very little going for it right now.

You are probably thinking that I am an idiot for buying this thing.  It doesn't even drive after all.  You may be right, but I don't care.  This isn't about making money off of the car or having a perfect one for me to look at on the weekends, but keep it under a blanket the rest of its life.  This isn't about concourse events or first place ribbons.  This is about my sincere love of cars and belief that they play a much bigger role in our lives than we usually recognize.
I hate it when people say that they just want something to get them from A to B.  Sure, cars can do that, but thats not all they do.  There is something that happens between A and B that makes a car special.  You build memories in your car, it becomes an extension of your identity.  Your car also says a lot about you.  It could say, "I just had a child and now need room for 15 people so that my 7 lb. baby can fit." It may also say, "I am a man and people need to hear how manly I am."  It could just as easily say, "I am concerned about the environment, but have no idea how or if this car is helping the environment." (By the way, its really not on the grand scheme of things.)  Your car could also say, "I have arrived."  Your car may not say that much about you except, "I have no knowledge about cars so I bought this Enter Korean Make and Model Here."  Whatever it is doesn't matter as much as the fact that you own your car.  Many people paint their cars their favorite color or put glowing lights all over them or jewels or decals or whatever.  Some people never wash their car, thats when their car is saying, "My owner doesn't care much about me right now."  Whatever you do or don't do, you interact with your car, and it tells a story.  Sometimes the stories it tells is pungent like a patch of spilled formula that has rotted and will never go away, or a stain on the backseat from your friends eating food while you went on that road trip in college. Sometimes it has many stories to tell because it is old and dying.  And we let our cars die.
It seems to me that most people want to keep a car until it dies with the hope that the odometer has rolled over so many times that you can't remember how many miles are actually on the thing.  We hope that the relationship lasts until death do us part.  The sad part is that when they die, we send them off and marvel at our new car that smells like new car and is quiet on the interstate.   Then we wonder how we could have put up with that old P.O.S.
But I don't think that cars should die.  I think that, like people, they can be reborn.  Like the car that I bought, it had been killed off by at least two owners before me, but I want it to live on.  I want it to get to know my twins and take them on their first dates.  I want it to take Sarah and me off on a weekend vacation to the mountains.  I want it to snort and growl on a race track and purr softly through the neighborhood.  I want to give it life...again.

And so this is a spiritual exercise.  It has to be, otherwise I couldn't do it.  But I can see the car how it will be one day, not as it is today.  If I focus on its faults now, I will never gets past the cracked paint.  But it I can focus on its perfected form, I can claw through the rust and dirt and rebuild it to be beautiful again...just like us.

Because we don't just become like Christ one day.  We are forged and beaten to that point.  We are sanded and smoothed, pounded and welded into the body of Christ.  It is only after we are stripped to our bare form that we are clothed by the Father.