Mazda (A.K.A. Elvis)

Whelp, another one for the Mazda!  Yep, another token of characteristic and more personality for that poor, little, old car! Who knew what we would discover Mother's Day night.  That car took another hit for the home team.  It surely did!

I giggled a bit during my pastor's sermon a couple of weeks ago.  He used his vehicles as an example for something in his sermon and what struck me was when he said basically that a car doesn't have much of a personality until it earns a nickname--one of his vehicles being called "Blue Thunder" by the way.  He was correct and I giggled when he mentioned it.  Now my nice mini van doesn't have a nickname; however, the blue, little, four door Mazda sure does!  We have started calling that little car Elvis because it shakes, rattles and rolls thanks to its age and mileage!

Now don't take me wrong.  That car keeps on truckin' and Scot and I have a rule of thumb, which we live by which is if it ain't broke don't fix it, OR in many of our cases, don't buy something newer yet.  You should see our new entertainment center we finally got, for example!  We saved our money and paid for the wall unit in cash; however, what now sits upon it is an old tube TV who's power button fell into the TV and now it has nice masking tape in its stead, because it was the quickest thing I could find to use to prevent little fingers from going into the hole where the button used to be!  Yep, if you take a closer look at the picture below, that new entertainment center is kind of screaming out for a big 55 inch flat screen TV instead! (And yes, there is a line of toy trains at the base of the entertainment center when I took the picture!)

So we plan on running Elvis into the ground but it really does kind of suck when you look at all the dents and scraped paint that were not caused by us!  Yep, Elvis has fallen victim to several opening door slams from other vehicles (how rude!), a bi bi gun attack (not sure if I spelt that correctly!), a Burger King sign that came loose in a wind storm, a bad paint job on the trunk, a broken window from a towing company, a teenager who couldn't drive at a gas station and then what happened on Mother's Day!

After returning from a nice Mother's Day outing at about 9:30 PM at night, we pulled into our reserved parking space in front of our house to discover that somebody had hit our nicely parked Mazda and evidently used our reserved spot to do so as they exited our reserved parking space as you can gather from the evidence observed!  And what infuriated me the most was they didn't even leave a note!  I looked up and down the street wondering who it was and if they were still here and wondering if my busy body neighbor "L" saw who it may have been?

I headed off to bed feeling very agitated at whomever it was  who drove their white/grey vehicle into our parked Mazda (a.k.a Elvis) leaving deep scratch marks on the bumper while all the while using a reserved parking space that they were not permitted to use.  I started to almost curse the person but then I laid my head upon my pillow and began to pray for the driver instead.  However, I did start the prayer off more condemning like.  I used such phrases as, "Lord, teach the driver the errors of his/hers ways." "May they come to the realizations of their wrongdoings."  "Heep burning coals upon their head so that they may repent of their sin." As I was praying those prayers, however, the Spirit softened me and lead my prayer in a different direction.  I prayed for the driver and I prayed that God would bless that person regardless.  My anger morphed into a more Christ-like love.  Though I still find myself slightly agitated at the person who caused Elvis' newest wounds, praying for blessings upon them and God's hands to direct him or her is still sweeter than I had originally felt before I changed my prayer.


Who knew how much I would learn about being more Christ-like than I have learned with that old Mazda.  I have learned two huge things about mercy and grace through that Mazda in as just as many years.  So now I have another reminder on that car to remind me of grace and love. 


I challenge you that if you have a person or situation in your life that makes you either want to act sinfully, with resentment and anger and speaking words and committing actions that you should best not do, I ask that you evaluate the situation more deeply and choose to be more Christ-like in your response.  Don't stoop to the world's level and norms, but challenge yourself, with God's help of course, to set forth an example of love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, and forbearance instead.