I thought I saw an opening at the car wash on my way home. I’d been eyeing the lines for several days, waiting for the onslaught of clean car devotees to subside. I’m far from an automobile neat-freak, but the recent snows, ice, and rain had left its nasty residue on my once white vehicle.
Pulling in, I was mistaken about the lines. The opening was for the older drive—through. The newer, and of course, better one, was at least five cars deep. Impulsively, I opted for the older one.
I swiped my card for the $8 special: nothing. I swiped it again: nothing. And again, and again and again. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Seeing a couple of employees, I waved.
“We don’t work for the car wash. We just do repairs,” the younger man informed me as he sauntered over to me. Still, I explained my plight. “I think my boss can help,” he said, passing on my persistence to his superior.
“Swipe your card again,” the next man instructed me. I did: nothing. After several repeated tries with no results, he called someone else and told the next guy the problem. By now, the cars in the other line were moving along quite efficiently.
“With all these men on it, we’re getting somewhere,” I thought. “The main guy will surely know something.” But the longer I waited, the less optimistic I became. I started channeling George Costanza: “Surely I’ll get a free car wash for all my trouble.”
With phone in hand and no results, the maintenance person finally looked at me: “He doesn’t know, either.”
“I hope it hasn’t been charging me for every time I’ve swiped my card, ” I told him. I could imagine my wife asking, “What’s this $250 car wash charge?”
All I could do was take a picture of the customer service number on my cell and hope for the best. By then, I had waited longer than if I had gotten in line for the newer car wash.
Driving home, I shook my head at myself.
There are no shortcuts to cleanliness.
My Bible reading earlier that morning had been from the Old Testament. God was giving instructions to Moses about the tabernacle. Chapter after chapter delineates the outlay of the place where the people were to meet with God to cleanse their sin. God gave ornate and detailed instructions, from the ark of the covenant, to construction of the mercy seat, the altar for the burnt offering, the clothing for the priests, and even the curtains in the tabernacle. And I hadn’t even gotten to the Scripture about how they were to present the actual sacrifices themselves.
I’m grateful I don’t have to build an altar or find a priest to receive God’s cleansing grace. I awake every morning and thank Him, “Great is your faithfulness.” But I do have to think about it. It’s not enough to wave my hand at God, “I didn’t mean to,” unless I am genuinely sorry and want to come home to my heavenly Father, on his terms. It’s easy for me because it was enormously difficult for God, for Him to come to us in the Son, Jesus Christ, demonstrating his love on the cross.
I need a cleansing more than my dirty car. But ducking into the short lane, opting for the cheaper wash, or even hoping for a free one, going about it on my terms, would make a mockery of what God did for me.
In a now-famous quote on grace, German theologian and pastor, and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed at Flossenburg concentration camp in1945, put it like this: “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
If my car could have honked its horn to thank me, I’m sure it would have done just that the next day, when I drove away from the car wash, all spick-and-span. But I had not taken the shortcut; I had humbly gone through the process on the car wash’s terms.
And I was all the better for it.