What got me started thinking about
a time many years ago when we realized our keys were locked in our van, I
cannot tell you. This event happened
close to 20 years ago at a marina area in West Alton. A couple my husband taught with owned a
houseboat, and they had invited the staff to come for a shared meal and a ride
on the large boat. It was a nice, warm
day—perfect for enjoying someone’s “hospitality” afloat. Yes, perfect until we realized our keys were
locked in our van.
I
do not remember if my purse was also in the car or if perhaps I hadn’t brought
one that day, but there was no one anywhere with another set of keys—not a
pleasant realization. However, our
“crisis” had a surprising and quick remedy.
One of the teachers at the marina had worked part time repossessing
cars. That line of work ended when
people started shooting at him as he tried to drive their cars away. The tool he used to make his “keyless
entries” was still in his car, though.
It was a very slim, flexible, long device that he slipped down in the
crease where the window went up and down in the door. Within seconds, our car was unlocked, and we
were back in business.
So,
why am I thinking about this one time we found ourselves locked out of a car? Perhaps because I, like many others, face
various life situations that can make us feel locked out, unable to gain access
to the help or love we need and seek—from doctors, from companies, from people
we know and care about, maybe even from God.
I have envisioned myself with bloody knuckles from banging on doors
that don’t seem to budge day after day after day. I would say we all are in need of someone
with a “magic tool” from time to time.
I
certainly would not equate the tools of God’s kingdom with magic, but His
thoughts, His ways, His means of breaking in and getting through are wondrously
powerful—and so different than ours.
Before Saul became Paul, he was “breathing threats and murder against
the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1).
He was locked in to his ideas about religion as a zealous Pharisee who
had no intention of following this man called Jesus. But a light shone on him as he journeyed to
Damascus, and then Jesus spoke to him, asking, “Saul, Saul, why are you
persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4). Just like
that, his course was turned around and his zeal rightly directed toward the
living God. Who would have thought up
that plot line for the persecutor of early Christians.
Even
more dramatic is the grand reversal we will celebrate this coming weekend. Those opposed to Jesus, including many
religious people of His day, thought they had it “locked up.” Jesus had been nailed to a cross and died,
then taken to a tomb. A very large stone
was placed over its opening and guards were stationed to keep the dead body of
Jesus undisturbed. But what the forces
of evil had designed, and men had carried out could not lock out the grand
purpose of God to redeem mankind. The resurrection
power of the living God brought Jesus back from the dead after He had gained
the victory over sin and death.
So
maybe the memory of the former car repossesser who rescued us that day so long
ago has been a prodding to me by the Holy Spirit to keep looking up and to keep
trusting in the ways and means of God to push through and
bust open some of these doors I have been beating on.
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