Complicated Systems

This morning Joy and I had a bit of bad luck. Joy was taking a friend to a very important meeting when suddenly our car, the car I bought new in 2009 and has been nothing but perfectly reliable for us, stopped running. I was just about to leave for work when I got a frantic phone call from our friend, letting me know what was going on

Thankfully the car conked out only a few blocks from the meeting, so our friend made it on time. But I rushed over to see what I could do. When I got there, there were police and a very friendly employee of a local business who charged up the battery of the car so I could get it to the church. He actually charged it up three times before I got it back, and I am extremely grateful... Thank you, Jonathan!

Turns out that it was pretty easy to diagnose that the alternator had gone out. It was still smoking when I got there. Good news... the alternator on this car is right on top and SHOULD be relatively easy to replace. That might be the subject of my next post if all does not go well.

But it got me thinking about complicated systems like these. Cars have so many things going on in them. This part is connected to that part and to that one and if any one of them doesn't function properly, something will go wrong. For years the tire pressure monitoring system has been non-functional in this car. Annoying, but no big deal. But when the alternator goes out, that is a really big deal. The car won't run. Interestingly, it won't change gears, the key won't come out of the ignition... It's a mess.

Systems that are interconnected like this need care and maintenance to run efficiently. Even then, an unexpected issue can arise like the meltdown of an alternator, that will shut everything else down. That one failure stops the entire system.

It's like that in our lives, too. Maybe we have issues like the tire pressure monitoring system. It isn't going to shut us down, but it shows the system is not functioning perfectly. But a single important part can stop us in our tracks. When that happens, there's nothing to do but pull off on then side of the road, get a tow or get help from a friend or even a perfect stranger to get to where you can work on your system, and take the time to fix/heal.

Just as an extra word, the system is bigger than I would have imagined. Joy would not have been driving that car, except that last week we noticed a screw in the tire of Joy's normal car, and haven't had the time to take it in to get it fixed. So, she has been driving my old car instead. One small screw in the system, what seemed to be an entirely different system, led to today's frustrating breakdown.

It's good in these situations to recognize that this is no one's fault. It just happens. And we will take time out today to deal with the problem, fix it the best we can, and move on.

That, too, is the same for things that happen in our lives.

May you always have time to fix/heal when you need to do so, and may always know it's OK to take that time.

That's the view today.

Pastor Chris