If you are one of those mechanical types, the kind of person who can actually operate your TV remote with ease, or change an outlet, or even frame a wall, I stand in awe of you. I’m just not one of you.
I asked my wife, “How good do you think I am in helping with handy-man things around the house?”
“Well, you can grill steaks and iron a shirt,” she said, trying to be kind.
I pressed: “But what about car stuff, you know, like changing a tire, or patching a radiator hose, or changing the oil and filter? Go ahead, be totally honest, rate me on a scale of 1-10.
“Zero,” she said, with no hesitation.
“Ouch,” I said. “Maybe I didn’t mean ‘totally’ honest, just honest.”
When it comes to changing a tire, I do know there are two major parts involved in that project: one, you’ve got to take off the flat tire and second, you put on the new tire. Both of those are part of the one act of changing the tire: taking off; putting on.
I also know this concept of taking off and putting on holds true for making changes in our lives. Before we can put the new and improved into our lives, we’ve got to take off the old and rotten.
My daughter, Mary, texted me earlier this week, “I can’t believe it’s already time for Lent.”
Lent is that six-week period when many Christians prepare for Easter with self-reflection and examination. Those who participate in Lent usually give up something, like sweets, or a favorite food or drink. Traditionally, Lent has involved times of fasting, prayer, and giving alms or contributions to those in need. The idea is that giving up those things will help the participant focus on something better. That’s because we seem to intuitively know spiritual transformation goes deeper than simply refraining from doing something we like.
Giving something up is like removing the flat tire. It’s impossible to put a new one on as long as that old one is there.
Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, clearly recognized this principle in his Twelve Step Program. It’s a process of thinking and doing. As negative aspects of thinking are addressed, they are met at once with the positive. One step involves thinking it, another, doing it. They are two but one, like the two parts of changing a tire. The program at its core is one of action: removing the old and replacing with the new.
Part of the value of Lent is that while not doing some things that we are accustomed to doing, like, for instance, eating chocolate bon bons, we are replacing them with something better, like maybe using the money normally spent on bon bons to buy a homeless person a hamburger.
As the biblical Jeremiah said, “Let us test and examine our ways. Let us return to the Lord.”
Lent is designed to help us test and examine our ways (take off the old tire) and return to the Lord (put on the new).
It can give us a picture of ourselves, who we are and what we can be like, not only for a 40-day journey preceding Easter but for the journey of a lifetime.
I still may not be able to patch a radiator hose, repair a crack in drywall, or reprogram the VCR, but I can let go of some needless things in my life while replacing them with better. It may not happen all at once, but perhaps I can do it for the forty days of Lent, or longer, perhaps even a lifetime—one day at a time.