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2007

9th July
Smells

2nd July
Smile

26th June
Waterlogged

11th June
Plans

6th June
Letters

21st May
Friends

May 9th
Stereotypes

May 1st
Broken

April 16th
Climbing hills

April 9th
The Three Trees

April 2nd
Small but deadly

March 28th
Toby the SuperDog

March 19th
Mountains

March 4th
Lone Daffodil

February 26th
Working hours

February 19th
Memory

February 12th
Piercings

February 5th
Patience

January 29th
Surprise

January 22nd
Wind

January 15th
Honesty

January 8th
My Car

January 3rd
Happy New Year

My Car

On this wet and dull January day, I can honestly say that I'm not really feeling the happiness of the new year! I assume that by now most of you will be back at school, college or work, and for that I am truly sorry....bring on the next holiday!

 I love my car. It’s a red Citroen C3(see above, except mine’s red, as I just said!) and although it has been known to be mocked for being a ‘granny’ car, I think it’s ace! I bought it this time last year and in the next couple of days it will reach it’s third birthday. So it’s a fairly new car and the first car I’ve had with electric windows and a CD player – yes I have no idea about anything under the bonnet, but it can play my music and put the windows down with ease!

Now to celebrate my car’s birthday I took it this morning to the garage for a mini-service and it’s MOT – a bit like a coming of age ritual I suppose. All was going well until they told me that my car had failed! What! I couldn’t believe it! I think that 3 years is not old for a car and that it shouldn’t fail it’s MOT this early on in it’s life. What are they playing at??!! It turns out that the brakes failed me – looks like I’m going to have to stop using them so much!!

I use my car all the time – strangely they don’t do regular bus services to random Methodist chapels! I transport young people in my car and my boot is usually full of useful things like paint, a parachute (of the games variety not the jumping out of a plane type!), stereo and other vital youth worker paraphernalia. Without my car I would be truly lost, or at least find life extremely difficult. Therefore when I am told that to fix my car’s brakes in order to pass the MOT it will cost me £400, I know that I am going to have to hand over the money.

As I am trudging back from the garage in order to get home and cry into my chequebook before picking up my car later in the day, I started thinking. Well to be honest firstly I started to curse the mechanics and the makers of Citroen and even the nice girl on reception! After that I started to think more productive thoughts. All cars once they reach 3 must by law have MOT’s every year and despite the cost, I agree. It is important that our cars are checked over to make sure that they are roadworthy and safe to drive. It is a good thing that areas highlighted in an MOT can be fixed and sorted out – instead of us carrying on driving the car oblivious to the potential dangers. In reality I am happy to pay 4 hundred quid rather than not being able to stop my car from driving into a wall, or a person.

So as I walked home I started to do a check-up on my life – a sort of spiritual MOT. January is a time of year when we make New Year’s resolutions and within the church hold covenant services. It is a time of fresh starts and new beginnings, but I found that I was wanting to start anew without checking out the old. It is not surprising that, like the failing car, there were things in my life that had fallen apart and broken down. I hadn’t really been aware of them either – I’d just carried on with my day to day life, expecting everything to be in working order, expecting my relationship with God to be how it was the last time I looked. It wasn’t. It isn’t.

It seems that over the festive period I talked a lot about the real meaning of Christmas, I’d spent time going to numerous carol concerts, Christingles and nativity plays, and yet I’d forgotten to actually include Jesus in any of them. When I looked back it seems ages since I spent quality time praying – I’d taken a break from my faith over Christmas and had forgotten to come back to it! I suddenly realised that my worship has been non-existent and dull at best, and not surprisingly I have found myself quite distant from God.

How long would I have carried on without noticing this gradual wear and tear in my faith? When would I have noticed that things weren’t right? Just like the cost to fix the car will make a huge dent in my bank balance, the cost to fix my life and to get me back on track will also be high. I will need to invest my time in prayer and to make the effort to get back the good habits I’ve lost. Unfortunately there are no quick fixes, no easy solutions, but somehow that makes it worth more in the end.

So in this season of new promises and targets for the year, I hope that you take the time for a faith MOT. It can be painful and difficult to honestly answer questions about where you are with God, what God is calling you to do or to not do, and what you have to do in order to be where you want to be spiritually. But it is worth it to get back on track and to know that you are travelling safely with God beside you.

Love Nat xxx