This week I’m celebrating fifty two years as a licensed driver. Like most men, I naturally assume I’m a superior driver. The truth is I’m just competent enough not to injure myself or innocent pedestrians. I also spend far too much time reading bumper stickers and watching what other drivers are doing while they’re supposed to be driving. Once upon a time I could read a bumper sticker from a safe distance. Now, if I want to read your bumper, I have to tailgate you. I won’t comment on the silly things you’re doing behind the wheel, but I am working on a book.
Recently I was driving a loaner while my car was being serviced—a luxury model from a certain company that apparently believes drivers need more buttons than a NASA vehicle. It was keyless, of course. To start it, you put your foot on the brake and push a button. I’m used to that with my hybrid. But this wasn’t a hybrid. This was an old-fashioned internal combustion engine, the kind that used to require a little finesse and a lot of prayer.
My grandfather turned me loose behind the wheel about three years before the State of Alabama thought it was a good idea. I learned on what we called the “lonesome road”—a gravel stretch with only one real hazard: the creek running alongside it. Where I grew up, a bayou was a creek, and a creek was something you didn’t want to drive into. The only traffic on that road consisted of grandparents giving driving lessons and children learning how to scare them.
Most of my self-taught Drivers-Ed happened in a 1949 Plymouth Special Deluxe. You didn’t so much drive that car as point it in the general direction you hoped to go. Its only luxury was an AM radio. It had a starter button too—but starting that car on a cold morning was a full-body athletic event. You turned the key, depressed the clutch, pushed the starter button, and pumped the gas pedal like you were trying to churn butter. Getting that engine to fire was one of the early rites of male competency.
So imagine my amusement when I started the loaner car with a gentle tap of a button. No pumping the gas. No choke. No carburetor to flood. No vapor lock. If automakers are going to bring back push-button starters, they could at least bring back some of the drama. Cars have changed a lot in fifty-two years. Sometimes I feel like I’m not keeping up. When the service manager asked if I wanted a tutorial on all the features, I said, “I would rather not.”
And that’s when it hit me.
There are times I feel like I’m not keeping up with Jesus either. He asks me to go and do, and I would rather not. He asks me to love and forgive, and I would rather not. He asks me to look honestly at my life, and I would rather not. Sometimes the hardest thing to face is the mirror, and I would rather not.
Preachers feel it too. Some Sundays we leap out of bed ready to preach the love of God. Other Sundays we pull the covers over our head and think about calling in sick to ourselves. On those mornings, “I would rather not” feels like a full liturgy.
And you know what? Jesus understands. In the Garden of Gethsemane, facing the cross, He prayed a prayer that sounds an awful lot like “I would rather not.” But He went anyway. For you. For me.
So this Sunday, when you wake up and think about church and feel that tug of “I would rather not,” know this: you’re in good company. Preachers feel it. Jesus felt it. But blessings live on the other side of pushing past it.
How about it.