and tell us to run away.
I drove that yellow pickup truck for 120 , 000 miles—and do you know
what? I never changed the oil. Not even once. This, of course, did
irreparable damage to the engine. I drove down the street each day with
white smoke billowing out of the exhaust pipe. I looked like Uncle Buck.
Most of us will do almost anything, even foolish things, to avoid being
told what it is we want. When someone tries to control us, it teaches us
new ways to be dumb because it reminds us of old ways we’ve been
manipulated before.
One morning, I walked out of my house to get in my yellow truck, but
it wasn’t there. I wondered for a second as I walked back inside the house
with my keys whether I’d loaned the truck to someone. Did I forget it
downtown? Was my friend sitting in it somewhere with his hands at ten
and two? Nope. Someone had stolen it. It wouldn’t be hard to do. There
were no locks. The stolen truck wouldn’t be hard to find either. The
police could just follow the trail of white smoke.
A couple of weeks later, the police called and said they’d found the
truck. But I didn’t want it anymore. It barely ran. With a bit of distance, I
realized for the first time how messed up it really was and how correct
my father had been years earlier.
Jesus told His friends a story about a father and a lost son. The boy
wasn’t spending his days in the driver’s seats of other people’s trucks, but
pretty close. He’d messed up and felt really bad about what he’d done,
just like my friend by the railroad tracks did. But when he was found,
something different happened to the son than to my yellow-truck friend.
The son ran back toward the relationship he had with his father, not away
from it. It’s something we all get to decide whether we’ll do. You’ve
probably messed up a couple of times. Me too. Run back toward God, not
away from Him.