Forty Six And I Have Never Opened It

Ted has owned this car for six years and has never opened the hood.

Not once. Not to look, not to check anything, not by accident. He knows there is a lever somewhere down by his left knee, because a man at a service station reached in and pulled it once while Ted stood outside, and he watched him do it, and he has thought about that lever more times than he would care to admit.

He is forty six years old. He runs a crew of nine. He can look at a roof and tell you inside a hundred dollars what it will cost to put right and he will be correct. He has raised two children and buried a father and got a company through a bad year.

And there is a lever by his left knee that he has never pulled.

Now I want to be careful here, because if I am not careful this turns into a story about a foolish man and it is not one.

What is actually going on is arithmetic, and it is the same arithmetic every time.

If Ted opens that hood at twenty two, he is a young man learning something, and that is fine and normal and nobody thinks anything of it.

If he opens it at forty six, in front of anybody at all, the opening comes with a second thing attached. It comes with: so you have never done this before. And the answer to that question is twenty four years long, and he does not want to give it.

So the cost of the first small step keeps going up, and it goes up on its own, every year, without anybody adding anything to it.

And the terrible arithmetic of that is that the longer he waits the more expensive it becomes, which is the exact opposite of how almost everything else in a life works.

His son, who is nineteen and knows a bit, said in the summer, "Dad, when did you last check your oil?"

And Ted said, "It's due a service."

Which is not an answer. His son did not notice that it was not an answer. But Ted noticed, all the way through supper.

The cost is not in the doing

Let me say what I am not going to do, so a man can settle.

I am not going to tell you what is under there or what any of it does, because that is a job for somebody standing next to you and not a voice on a page. And I am not going to make a joke about a grown man and a hood, because there is nothing funny about it and I have watched that particular joke close a door in somebody for good.

What I want to look at is the twenty four years, and what to do with them, which is nothing at all.

Here is the verse, and I want you to notice what it does not ask for.

For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.Isaiah 41:13

Now look at the order of operations in that sentence, because the order is the whole message.

He takes the hand. Then He says fear not. Then He says I will help.

There is no step in there where the man explains himself. There is no accounting. There is no moment where God says, and how long has this been going on. The hand is taken first and the fear is addressed second and the help arrives third, and nothing is required of the man in between except to be there with a hand.

That is not an accident of translation. It runs through the whole chapter. Israel is being spoken to as a nation that is frightened and behind and has no case to make, and God does not ask them to make one.

You are not a foolish man, and Scripture takes a hand before it says one word about the fear or the help. It is written that the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying fear not, which puts the taking hold first in the sentence, and His Spirit is the one who makes that order true of a Saturday in a driveway.

You have never been asked to account for twenty four years in order to start, and the passage does not contain a place to put such an account. Isaiah 41 goes from the hand to the fear to the help without an audit anywhere in it, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that absence a real freedom rather than an oversight.

Do the smallest possible thing, and do it alone

Here is the practical part, and it is smaller than anybody braces for.

The job is not to learn about cars. The job is not to become the kind of man who knows. The job is one physical action, done once, by yourself, with nobody watching.

Open the hood. Find the dipstick, which is the thing with a loop or a T shaped handle on top of it, usually brightly colored, sitting in a tube. Look at it.

Do not pull it. Do not check anything. Do not look up what anything else is. Do not stand there trying to learn six things.

Find it, and then put the hood back down and go inside.

That is the entire assignment, and I want to say why it is designed that way.

Because the thing that has to break is not ignorance. It is the association between the hood and the interrogation. Twenty four years have welded those two together, and the only thing that unwelds them is opening it once with nobody there to ask a question.

You have permission to do this alone, and the written word never once requires an audience for an act of faith. Isaiah 41 has God speaking directly to the one He is holding rather than to a crowd standing round, and the Spirit of God is what makes a private act in a driveway a real one.

And I will say the plain half too, because a man deserves it.

Knowing where a dipstick is does not make anybody competent, and it does not fix a car, and it will not stop a repair bill. What it does is put one true fact in a place where there were none, and a man with one true fact has something to build the second one on. That is all. It is not much. It is not nothing either.

You were never behind, and no verse anywhere runs a clock on when a man was supposed to learn something. It is written that God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble, which is Psalm 46 offering presence rather than a schedule, and His Spirit is what makes that presence available on a gravel turnaround on a Saturday.