| Dear Readers:
I drive old cars. I do this because I
like them, of course, but mostly because they are cheap. I got in
the habit when all my seven children lived at home. Children make
new cars look old very quickly, so why waste the money? When you’ve
got kids, that’s all you’ve got. I try never to drive a car made in
the current decade. I am what the folks at AAA call a "heavy user of
road services."
So I was in Nashville, and our 1984
LTD station wagon broke down. (Look, it rides great, and it’s
big.) It wouldn’t start, even though Wal-Mart had replaced
the battery a week before. New battery.
Friends gave me a jump, the car
started, then I went into a building to use the phone, and left
Christian waiting in the car. Six minutes later he came in, held up
the keys, and announced, "Car’s dead." I called Triple A.
Truck came out, fellow jumped off the
car, I pulled out of the parking place, and it died again,
permanently. I had him tow me to a Ford dealership.
I am not a heavy user of
dealership "service." Susan and I favour the Underground Economy in
mechanics, a.k.a. shade-tree mechanics. Something about the smell of
old motor oil on the ground gets my blood running. I like the way it
shines and changes colour when the sun hits it. Besides, how can you
trust a mechanic with all his digits intact? Really, it’s the
game I love – did I really need a complete engine
overhaul, or did he just do me in?
So we pull into the dealership, and a
perky attendant steps out. Clean fingernails. Clean clothes. All ten
fingers. "What’s wrong?"
Mentally I quickly congratulate myself
on not remarking, "Oh, nothing, I just thought it would be a fine
day to have my car towed." I did not say that. I was
polite.
"It won’t start. Dead, but a new
battery."
"Well, I don’t know," he says
cheerfully, "we don’t usually work on cars over ten years old." I
didn’t know which to hit first, him or the pavement. "You know, hard
to get parts, bolts twist off." He smiled. I didn’t. ‘But we’ll see
what we can do."
We wait in the spotless waiting room
while they prepare my car for a complete walletectomy. Thirty
minutes later they call my name over the loudspeaker, and I
go out into the service area. Mr. We-Don’t-Work-On-Old-Cars tells me
I had a cable loose. I go to the cashier, mentally enumerating the
friends I can call for a loan.
The cashier hands me the bill.
Sixty-five bucks for the work (must have been a very loose
cable) and $6.50 for an "environment fee." "What’s this?" I ask,
manfully suppressing the volcanic anger and acid vituperation
coruscating up my throat.
"I don’t know. I just add them up. Ask
one of the guys outside."
I buttonhole one of the
servicemeisters outside. ‘What’s this?"
"Oh, that’s a charge for disposing of
the fluids and oil we use when we work on cars."
"Who did that," I ask cheerfully, "the
communists in Washington or the local soviet in Nashville?"
He never batted an eyelash. "I think
it was the local soviet."
A NEW GRANDSON
To the praise and glory of God on
December 8, 1999 at 11:55 a.m. WALLACE BEDFORD BAIN, a child of
God's everlasting covenant, entered into this world. His mother,
Liberty Sanders Bain, is recovering well from her c-section. His
father, Johnny Ray Bain, is exhausted. Pray that Bedford might live
up to the lives of the great heroes whose name he bears.
Join us in giving thanks and praise to
God for the great blessing of this wonderful delivery, and pray that
God might graciously make this child his faithful soldier and
servant throughout his whole life.
This is our third grandchild. Just one
thing I still don’t understand. Why do my children always roll their
eyes when I say, "Three down, forty-six to go"?
THE LOOMING IS ALMOST OVER
Y2K has been looming at us for a long
time, and that will soon end. Maybe I’m just obtuse, but I intend to
keep working along, writing these newsletters and come hell or Y2K,
mailing them out to you. My fervent prayer is that God will keep and
protect you, whatever the outcome, and that all our work in the last
two and a half years has benefited you.
Whatever happens, the world will not
end. God will still sovereignly control all things, and will
continue to work out his gracious will in the affairs of men. I love
Psalm 68:19, 20, "Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with
benefits, even the God of our salvation. He that is our God is the
God of salvation; and unto GOD the Lord belong the issues from
death." I like Luther’s translation, too, "Blessed be the Lord, who
daily bears our burden... to the Lord our God belong escapes from
death." Which is it? Both, for in the mysterious providence
of God, those things which seem to us at first to be burdens (which
he bears for us!) turn into blessings. And to him belong, in this
world and the next, escapes from death. No wonder the psalmist ends
in a doxology,
"O God, wonderful art thou in thy holy
places: even the God of Israel, he will give strength and power unto
his people. Blessed be God." Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Ghost!
Joy to the world!
Franklin
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