Cup Holders

Today someone asked me about my car. We bought a Hybrid about 6 months ago and I volunteered some information that I regularly tell people: the gas mileage (it keeps a running tally); part of the increase in gas mileage is by re-training the driver (I get a grade each time I finish driving); the trunk space is a little smaller (battery storage); and there are other non-Hybrid cars that get equally good mileage, but that one of my incentives was to use my dollars to show I want to find alternatives. (Yahoo! I'm an activist! :-) Then he pressed to know some particulars. "Is it a 4-Cylinder or 6-Cylinder behind the Electric Motor?" "How often do you have to replace the big batteries and how expensive will it be to replace?" Good, legitimate questions. My reply? "I know where the cup holders are!" Last year I helped my sister find a car and we teasingly scolded the salesman because he never even opened the engine in pretense of showing us the engine. He could see right away that we were more interested in finding all of the cup holders than the heart of the engine.

My prayer for the congregation?

Dear God, to be good emissaries of your message we must know what we believe, and why we believe that you are Lord of all. People will be able to see through a facade of empty words and shallow actions. We must be able to answer our questioners with conviction, with thoughtfulness, and with truth. You have provided the tools that we need; your Word, your Spirit, your Son. Fill us with a craving to further study and understand the texts so that we are able to declare in our own minds and to others what we hold true. Make us receptive to the Spirit and its inscrutable moments in our lives that splinter our reality so that we are able to reflect your image instead of our own. Force us to look at the Cross; the substance and the reality of the price of the life of Jesus. Help us to live beyond the veneer of saying we are a Christian, to being a Christ follower. Amen.