Fresh Start Devotionals

Out of Gas Susan and I entered into our marriage with equal assets and liabilities. I had an old Ford Courier pick-up and she had a Mazda sports car. She owed some money on some family land in Colorado and I owed a couple thousand dollars on my student loan from college. The debts were more permanent than the automobiles. It was probably about ten years before we paid off both those debts. That’s all right though, I consider them good investments. We still enjoy the use of the family property during the summers and my mind is still functioning (it is good to own your brain free and clear). The automobiles? Now that’s a different story. Within the first year of our marriage, the car was totaled in an accident, and the pickup threw a rod. We fixed the pickup and got another car. I was glad to get rid of that old Mazda—I never liked it. For one thing, it was hard to get into the car. God designed my body for a pick-up truck, not one of those low riding sports cars. But the real reason I didn’t like that car is because the gas gauge didn’t work. I can’t tell you the number of times Susan called me from a pay phone for me to pick her up after the car ran out of gas. It is a real feeling of helplessness to have to stand beside a multi thousand dollar car that won’t run because it needs a couple of bucks worth of gas. She’d raise the hood, call me and wait beside the car until I arrived. Ever been there? Have you ever run out of Spiritual energy? Too bad we don’t have a spiritual gas gauge, but then again, maybe we do. Next time we get that “stressed out” feeling, perhaps we should take it as a warning that we’re running low on fuel and find a way to fill our tanks. Jim L. Wilson, Fresh Start Devotionals (Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009).