Moses, in Exodus 2:22, said that he had become “a foreigner in a foreign land.”  Those words came to me the other day as I accompanied my brother and my son to a car show. I go to car shows on a regular basis, but none like this. Every car in this show, and there were hundreds, had been “slammed.”  I mean every one of them. Slamming a car means that you cut out the wheel wells, lower the geometry of the suspension so that the body of the car can rest on the ground, and then you put airbag suspension in them so that you can raise them enough to get on the road.  And then lower it again when you park.

       Oh, and every other car also had a bad case of negative camber. Do you see why I thought myself a foreigner in a foreign land? What does “negative camber” even mean? Negative camber is when the top of your car tire is closer to the car than the bottom of the tire is. Your tires wear a lot on the inside edge when this happens. Normal people go to Tire Kingdom to have that fixed. These people do it intentionally and in exaggerated ways to make the car look cartoonish.

        So here I am, a foreigner in a foreign land, and I find out that a big YouTuber car guy was there too. He is a native to this foreign land, I am not. I hadn’t even heard of him. He does one thing on YouTube, and one thing only. He stands next to a line of guys in their cars and takes a picture of a car, goes to the car behind it, and asks three questions. The first question is (as he shows the driver a picture of the car in front of him): “How would you rate this car from 1 to 10?”  Then he asks the driver how he would rate his own car. And finally, he asks a very insightful question: “How do you think other people would rate your car?”  He has done over 2000 of these. My brother got interviewed in his Toyota MR-2, I only got schooled in foreign car culture.

      I eventually got back to my own “Country” and looked up that YouTube guy. One or two videos went a long way for me. But the questions lingered. What if the videos weren’t about cars but about Jesus? What if somebody showed you a picture of Jesus, and asked you to rate how good Jesus was? And then they asked you how good do you think YOU are? And THEN they asked you how good do you think other people think you are? Or it could be something more vain: perhaps they show you a picture of the person in front of you and ask you to rate their looks. Then they ask you to rate your looks. Then they ask you how you think other people would rate your looks. What is the “delta” (as the engineers like to say) between the two numbers?

      Jesus had little patience for people whose delta (difference) was large. To the Pharisees, he said: “You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.” (Matthew 23: 27) Ouch! They put on airs and thought of themselves 10 out of 10. But Jesus, and I would imagine most other people, could see right through that veneer. The “delta” was great between what was on the outside and what really was on the inside.

     All of us would rate our cars, or ourselves, highly. And some might agree with our assessment, and others not. Our culture teaches us to not care what others think of us. And while we don’t want to live a life trying to impress others and begging them to like us, sometimes putting ourselves in the shoes of others and focusing back on ourselves is a good exercise.

I want there to be continuity between what I think of myself, what I know of myself, and what others see in me, too. That kind of integrity is important. And matters to Jesus.

Back home,

Craig

Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out.
Proverbs 10:9 (NIV)

Starting a new tab in Firefox, I landed on a “news” item that touted: “The weirdest things people have seen on Google Maps.”  Now, I like Google Maps app and use it all the time. And I haven’t really seen that many “weird” things on there, except blurred people and an occasional blurred house. But apparently some people look hard for these things. Things like a guy, dressed in the same clothes, holding the same camera – in two different States! What are the odds of that!?

       In another shot, which I really think merits a follow up, the Google car passed one of those radar detector signs that first state the speed limit and then post yours. Driving in a 25 mph School Zone, the Google car pictured itself going 32 mph.

Can you say self-incriminating?

       Another funny one was a screenshot of a little development in Nova Scotia. Off of Nova Scotia Trunk Highway 7 is, and I looked this up to verify it, a little development consisting of one street off of the Highway, and two little streets off of that. A small development. The street coming in is “This Street.”  The first street off of that is “That Street.”  And you guessed it; the second street is “The Other Street.”  As Larry the Cable Guy would say: “That’s funny right there, I don’t care who you are.”

       Other pictures showed the inconsistencies of the algorithms at Google, where some faces get blurred, like the Statue of Liberty, and some others are not. Sometimes, even pets get blurred and some don’t. In one, you can read the airline name of a plane that photobombed the satellite imaging somewhere in Mongolia if I remember correctly. In the rest of the world, it’s remarkable how you don’t see planes – there are a lot of planes out there!

        I smiled at these things because, well, it’s nice to know that the computer and the algorithms are not perfect. To be human is to be flawed. Machines can be sterile, but humans aren’t. If we were all perfect, we would all be the same. The idiosyncrasies we develop, the imperfections we find in ourselves, the mistakes we have made along the way, give us character. That truth not only makes us human but makes us likeable. People that pass themselves on as perfect lose credibility for me.

        Now, God wants us to be perfect (Matthew 5:48). And I, we, aspire to do that. And someday, in heaven, we all will be. And what a day of rejoicing that will be! But in the meantime, we need to appreciate one another’s character, one another’s imperfections.

        In Galatians 6 the Apostle Paul said, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”  I think bearing one another’s burdens often means dealing, in a positive way, with the idiosyncrasies of others. What burdens one person is not necessarily what burdens another. I suppose in illness we can find uniformity – but even there, how one person deals with the adversity of physical ailments may differ from the way another one does. Or how burdensome a particular job, or financial constraint, or spouse or… how burdensome something can feel for me may be different than the way you deal with it, and together, we can make those rough places in life plain (to misquote Isaiah).

         Every person we meet has as many idiosyncrasies as we do. Let’s give each other grace in that. And stand together as brothers and sisters in it. It’s funny how the glitches of a computer got me to that thought. One of my eccentricities, I suppose.

Wishing you a smile today,

Craig

And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted,
help the weak, be patient with them all. 1 Thessalonians 5:14

In Galatians 6:2, Paul says the following: “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way, you will fulfill the law of Christ.”  I think that’s a beautiful description, and call, of Christians living in community. When one person finds themselves burdened with grief, the community expresses their love by visiting with that person, praying for that person, and bringing them meals that they might otherwise skip because of their grief.

I gave just one example. You could come up with three more, I’m sure. “Carrying each other’s burdens” can be expressed in a million ways, sometimes physical, sometimes emotional, sometimes spiritual. In England, however, they’ve carried this to a whole new and silly level. It’s called the Annual Wife-Carrying Race.

While only in its 18^th year, the idea of the race comes from 19^th Century lore in Finland that says that gangs would raid villages and pillage women, carrying them out on their shoulders. So, this race recreates that image, which (and you might need to look this up) looks sillier than you think. Everyone enjoys a piggy-back ride. I enjoyed them as a kid and enjoyed carrying my kids as an adult.  But no, wife-carrying does not work that way. It appears that weight distribution happens better when the wife is inverted. Her legs stick out in front of her hubby, and her head is, well, depending upon her height, around his, um, waist.

So, while her head is throbbing from hanging upside down, and bouncing from his, um, back, she has the horrifying job of hanging on for dear life as they race up a hill. The guy has to run both and carry the weight, holding on tightly to her legs sticking out in front of him. Talk about taking the vow “to have and to hold” literally! Oh dear!

This past week, the race was in the English countryside, and a Finnish couple won first place. The runners-up (so to speak) were a British couple who will represent England in Finland’s race in July. And, this is just for free, you need to know that the race happened in Dorking, Surrey. Indeed!

Seriously now, St. Paul’s idea of carrying one another’s burdens gains some insight from this race. Let me share some thoughts:

1. Carrying one another’s burdens can be hard.

2. It can also be fun.

3. I think particularly as Americans, where we have been taught to “pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps,”

     receiving help can feel awkward. Being carried can often, but incorrectly, feel demeaning.

4. When the whole community gets involved, cheering the grace (I use the word only in a theological sense) on,

           the load lightens and the pace quickens.

Yes, there are lessons to be found in just about everything under heaven. Even in a wife-carrying race in Dorking, England. Let us be ever learning and uplifting.

Praising the One who has lifted all our burdens,

Craig

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others,
as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.1 Peter 4:10

The El Rio Pathway provides me with a lot of thinking time. Lately, I’ve been spending a decent amount of time on it. It takes me a good while to walk the 12 miles or so from my house to its northern end where it has crossed Congress twice.

I have labelled different parts of my walk. There’s the hospital segment by Boca Regional. Then there’s the FAU segment (which I want to share a thought about), and then the intersection of the Tri-Rail station, I-95 and Yamato, all of which are bypassed by the Pathway. And then there’s the stretch to Costco (you never pass up Costco), and finally the Big Bend.

For the last couple of weeks, before we had these rains, the canal that gives El Rio its name started slowing down. Usually, a nice flow of water cascades over a little dam along the FAU segment of the walk (think 4^th Avenue and about NW 17^th Street). But as I walked from day to day, the cascade became a trickle, then just a trickle on one side, until last week when the flow had stopped altogether.

That made for a calmness reminiscent more of a pool than a river. I smiled at the tranquility; I think peaceful waters soothe us as humans. But it told me that drought season had started visiting us. And indeed, we had fires out west that first week when I noticed this. I started wondering what tranquil waters meant. Calmness is one thing, stagnation is another. Drought even more. What do March and April have in store for us? Is this exposed little dam a sign? And what does this drought-induced pond say spiritually? I’d run out of philosophical inquiry by Spanish River Boulevard.

On the way back, at that complex intersection where you go under the train tracks, I-95 and Yamato, you actually walk on a section of the path that is below the water level of the canal. It would have been great if they had built the retaining wall out of glass so that you could see the fish go by (or iguanas more likely). In this section of the walk, the wind had picked up a little, and the flow of the ripples on the water flowed up stream. The water was moving in the wrong direction! Suddenly I engaged the philosophical inquiry again. (This inquiry quickly ended at Spanish River again, just coming southbound this time).

The tranquil waters, or shall we call them stagnant waters, were now flowing in the wrong direction, subject to the whim of the wind. Instead of going nowhere, the water was going backwards. And you know that it could not really flow backwards, at least not for long. Sans the power of the water flow, the pooled water just moved back and forth at the whim of the wind.

I think this happens to us. If we don’t follow in the flow of God’s grace and His will, if we lose the power of the Holy Spirit moving us forward, we trickle down to stillness like the little pool down by FAU. And while it can look tranquil, it leads to stagnation and even to going in the wrong direction. Remember what Dr. Livingston said? “I don’t mind moving as long as it’s forward.”  If we stop moving forward, we have started the process of moving backwards. That is not God’s plan for us. That simply is not the best for us–we are made to move forward. Physically that’s true, even if our goals change, and it’s also true spiritually. Job 17:9 says it succinctly: “The righteous keep moving forward, and those with clean hands become stronger and stronger.”  It’s important to keep this axiom before us, regardless of our age, our health, our status, anything. The righteous keep moving forward.

This week the rain has started the flow again in the canal. Praise God!

Putting my walking shoes on,

Craig

 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”  Isaiah 43:18-19