Caught Flat Footed

I am not as prepared as I think I am.

I forget this sometimes. Then life reminds me.

It was 8:30 this past Sunday night, and I was standing in my brother-in-law's pasture near Pintlala Alabama staring at a flat tire on our minivan. An hour from home. No spare. And apparently  Kia, in its infinite wisdom, puts 19-inch rims on a minivan….which means every perfectly good spare tire scattered across a farm in rural Alabama is exactly useless to me. Trust me I know this because we checked multiple.

At this point I'm convinced the minivan is the enemy.

We stood there doing the math. Kids in the car. An hour of dark highway between us and our driveway. A Sunday night, which meant nothing in town was open, and nobody we knew was awake enough to drive out and rescue us without it becoming a whole production.

So we did what you do. We unloaded every car seat, and put them in my sister's van. If you've never transferred four car seats in a pasture in the dark, I don't recommend it. There's a special kind of humility in fumbling with buckles while your 4 year old is chasing barn cats and you are being snorted at by nearby hogs. We got it done and piled the kids into my sister's van and left our Kia sitting on blocks in the field, looking abandoned and a little sad. I even told my wife on the way home that I feel like we left a child behind. 

I figured I'd deal with it Monday. Drive back out, find a tire shop, sort the whole embarrassing thing out on my own time, my own dime, and tell the story later as something that happened to me, not something anyone else had to be involved in.

My brother-in-law's dad had other ideas. He offered to run the tire to the shop and have them mount one, then meet me in town to swap out the vehicle. A huge help that I gratefully accepted. I went to bed Monday night thinking that was the end of it one tire, a favor I'd find a way to return, problem solved.

Next morning rolls around and I get a call. He didn't call to ask what I needed or whether Monday afternoon worked better than Monday morning. He just called to tell me he was already on his way.

With four new tires.

Not one. Four.

I tried to pay him. I actually tried twice, because the first no felt like the kind of no you're supposed to push past out of politeness. The second no was final.

When I pushed anyway, he told me why.

"I don't want to stand before God one day and have Him say I was a tightwad with what He blessed me with."

I didn't have anything to say to that. I'm still not sure there is anything to say to that. You can't argue with a man who has already settled on the stewardship of his own money. All you can do is stand there and let it land.

A few weeks ago, my dad had a minor health scare that landed him in the hospital. Nothing catastrophic, but enough to rattle everybody and enough to make a man think about what matters. One of the things he brought up while he was there was this section of verses in Philippians 4.

Paul is in prison when he writes it, actually in chains, and he stops to thank the church at Philippi for a gift they'd sent him. But the way he says it is profound.

He doesn't say thank you for the help. He says this:

"I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity." (Philippians 4:10, ESV)

The rejoicing isn't about the gift. It's about what the gift let them do. They'd been concerned all along. They just finally had the chance to show it. The tires weren't really about the tires either. They were about a man who'd been looking for a chance.

And then, after the famous verses about contentment and hunger and doing all things through Christ, Paul lands here:

"Yet it was kind of you to share in my trouble." (v. 14)

Except some people don't just share in it.

Some people show up with four tires already mounted and balanced on your van because they've already settled the question of what their blessings are for, long before your tire ever went flat.

I am not a man in chains. I had a flat tire on a Sunday night near Pintlala, Alabama, with a van full of kids and a farm full of useless to me spares. It is not the same kind of trouble Paul knew.

But I am a man who sometimes would rather handle things himself than let someone catch him standing in a field at 8:30 with no spare and no plan. There's a pride in that, even if it doesn't look like pride. It looks like independence. It looks like not wanting to be a burden. But underneath it, it's still pride.

What I got instead of handling it myself was a theology lesson from a man who never called it that. He just didn't want to be a tightwad with what God gave him.

I hope I'm learning to receive as graciously as he gives.
So that one day I can give like that too.

Love you dearly. Jacob.