Check Engine Light Life

Check Engine Light Life

You know what it looks like – what it feels like. That red or orangange light pops up and your stomach immediately drops. Usually it’s at the most inopportune time. Maybe you’ve just paid all your bills and you’re trying to make the leftover stretch, or maybe it’s right before ad you have to decide what to put off something else to get the car fixed so you can get back and forth to work. That check engine light life is filled with choices – and not the ones we like.

Choices

I miss the kids choices I got to make – which of the 31 flavors at Baskin Robbins to I want. Do I want to trade stickers, play manhunt, walk to the corner store, knock on this friend or that’s door to see if they can come out to play? But there’s a lesson in the choices that I learned early on too. You can choose to maintain the car, the house, the job, the relationship before the “check engine light” comes on, or you can run it until the wheels come off and watch them, in fact, do just that. But that’s not God’s way.

God’s Maintentance Program

God’s maintenance program is better.  There have been times in my life when I convinced myself that there was no other option. There was simply too much to do, too much to take care of, too much to handle and some things needed to be relegated to the back seat. As a mom – that “some thing” was often me. I found myslef always prioritizing everything else above myself, my needs, my health. I forgot that this wasn’t God’s plan. I forgot that He tells us to cast our cares, our anxieties, and our burdens on Him. I’d forgotten that His maintnenace plan included filling my oil, my flour, my belly, my strength, my rest, my cup. Throughout the bible God stops to care for one of His tired people. The care for the outcast, the forgotten, the forsaken, the fallen. When we forget to rely on Him, we are saying that we’d rather take care of it all even if we don’t have it. We’d rather drive it ’till the wheels come off.

Built In Blessings

He built blessings into His plan from the beginning. His maintenance plan is clear from before the Garden. Rest – every single week. Trust Him – He will provide (even after their fall, God provided animal skin clothing for them now that they needed something to protect them for a chosen life of hardship). He built blessings into how to protect our mental health into His commandements – don’t envy or covet, don’t do things that will result in terrible consequences, treat others the way we want to be treated. He built blessings into His teaching. Christ’s sermon on the mount went further – we are not bound by simple legalistic rules that can be subverted through loopholes. We are bound by the spirit of the law – because the Spirit of the law is what protects our hearts and lives.

Don’t Wait Till The Light Comes On

So don’t wait ’till the check engine light comes on in your life – God’s got a tried and true maintenance progrm just for you.

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”.

Matthew 11:28 (KJV)

Be Blessed and Keep Thriving