Leader's Insight: On Fords and Faithfulness

From my journal: My first car was an 8-year-old 1950 Ford (stick shift on the steering column) purchased for $200. Its mileage was north of 100,000. To call it a lemon is not an exaggeration.

I quickly learned that the Ford offered performance surprises every day. The starting motor was a fifty-percenter, meaning frequent pushes. The radiator leaked like a sieve. The fuel gauge was accurate to the nearest 25 gallons. The engine drank a quart of oil every 200 miles. The tires were bald, and the muffler was absent without leave.

On cold winter nights, I had to park the Ford at the crest of a hill near my college apartment and drain the water from radiator to prevent a freeze-up. In the morning I would refill the radiator, nudge the car downhill, release the clutch and hope that the engine would leap into life. No amount of prayer seemed to directly affect the success of this process.

I used to imagine that the Ford talked to itself when it saw me coming. “Looks like he’s in a hurry today. I’ll slow ’em down.” Or, “He looks like he’s dressed for a date. Probably wants to impress a pretty girl. He’s toast.” I tell you, it was not hard to believe that the Ford despised me.

For two years the Ford and I were stuck with each other. Every event in my day had to be planned around the possibility of its non-compliance. More than once, when it did start, I would leave the motor idling while I attended class or had dinner and saw a movie with someone. A car thief would have been warmly welcomed.

The Ford was, in a word, broken, and I had to accept its mechanical eccentricities as a normal part of my life. I couldn’t fix it because I wasn’t a mechanic, and I couldn’t afford someone who was. Add to that my suspicion that the Ford didn’t want to be fixed because its brokenness gave it a strange kind of “control” over me.

Today, decades later, I drive a relatively new vehicle (a Suburu Outback). But the memory of the old Ford remains in that part of the brain that stores past automotive horror stories. Every time I turn the ignition key and the Outback starts, I am freshly surprised because I still (to this day!) instinctively anticipate the “click” of a balky starting motor. I believe that, unlike the Ford, the Outback likes me and thinks nice things when it sees me coming. It appears committed to my happiness.

Nevertheless, if I had to liken myself to a car, I’d have to identify with the broken Ford and less the friendly Suburu (this side of heaven anyway). I know I’m supposed to say that I’m a sinner (because I am), but it’s more helpful to me to regard myself as broken—a person far, far less functional than God designed me to be and in possession of the same rebellious spirit I once imagined to be in the Ford.

Perhaps we are all like broken Fords who sometimes start and sometimes don’t, who may make it to an intended destination but, then again, maybe not. We’d like to appear as if we just came from the showroom. But the truth is that most of the time, we deserve to be towed to the junk yard.

The 12-stepper understands this rationale every time he introduces himself with the words, “Hi, my name is ________, and I’m an alcoholic. Which is not unlike saying, “My name is Gordon, and I’m broken.”

Thinking like this helps me to appreciate the remarkable grace and kindness of the Savior, Jesus, who searched for and loved broken “Fords” (then and now) and enjoyed rebuilding them and increasing their reliability factor. And thinking like this helps me to look at others (and at myself) with the understanding that they—like me—sometimes have more characteristics befitting an old broken Ford than a brand new Outback.

When seeing things from that perspective, one can get excited when anybody (beginning with myself) actually starts up and gets where they are supposed to go.

You could have a pretty fine church if everyone saw each other like this.

From the Journal of John Woolman (Colonial Quaker leader): While making pastoral visits to various Quaker meetings, he wrote: “The Lord, I believe, hath a people in these parts who are honestly concerned to serve him. But many I fear are too much clogged with the things of this life, and do not come forward bearing the cross in such faithfulness as the Almighty calls for.” (written 1756)

Saul Alinsky (20th century labor organizer and sometime philosopher): The single most important thing I ever learned was that I am going to die. For once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you are free. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in.

Mark Stibbe (In O Brave New Church, 1995): Aldous Huxley remarked in The Doors of Perception, “Countless persons desire self-transcendence and would be glad to find it in church. But alas, ‘the hungry sheep look up and are not fed.’ They take part in rites, they listen to sermons, they repeat prayers; but their thirst remains unassuaged.” The result is, says Huxley, people reject church and choose an addiction instead. “Disappointed, they turn to the bottle.” As Huxley puts it, “When, for whatever reason, men and women fail to transcend themselves by means of worship, good works, and spiritual exercises, they are apt to resort to religion’s chemical surrogates.”

Pastor and author Gordon MacDonald is chair of World Relief and editor at large for Leadership.

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