The Bug Is Empty

It seemed as though I could not believe my eyes.  I glanced out the window of my favorite coffee and beagle shop and there parked was a VW Bug.  One like I use to drive.  A 1958.  This one looked “bran new.”  My first inclination was to walk out to admire it completely.  Then I thought to look around the coffee shop to identify the likely owner.  I was surprise to find out it belonged to a young college aged female who had just placed her order and sat down at the two top next to me.  I asked if the “sharp little Bug was hers.  She acknowledged it was hers. I asked her if she minded if I take a closer look and while her order was being made we walked out and she told me the wonderful story of its history.  As we continued to talk inside, I burst out laughing.  She made the comment that she hoped Costco gas pumps were open because she thought she was running on fumes from the reserve tank.  She was taken back by my uncontrollable laughter but smiled and nodded and laughed herself as I relayed my journey with my own VW.   

I confessed I had a bad habit. I told her I think my tendency to test the meaning of the word "empty" began during those years of ownership of a VW Bug.  When my gas tank warning was nearing the last of its resources I’d flip the lever over to the reserve tank. The process started out innocent enough. I figured from that point on I had about thirty two miles before I was completely out of gas.  The crazy thing was I’d forget or remember there as a station that had  a lower price on down the road or I was late for an appointment and decided to stop for gas afterward. But somehow this initiated the unreasonable course of challenging my reserve tank. If I was once able to go twenty eight miles with my fuel, I reasoned, perhaps I could make it to that gas station just about two more miles to home where I had at least a gallon of gas in a can.  If I made it all the way home, I would forget to put it in the tank until the next morning when I had to be at appointment not far from a gas station.  “This time I can surely afford to the risk as my little reserve tank is faithful until I make one more stop:” I thought.

For a while I drove my "Bug" believing it had a larger reserve tank than what I was told. It seemed like I could drive with the fuel gauge past the empty mark forever. Each time I flipped it to “reserve,” I would ignore it to the point where I was certain I was running completely on fumes—and each time I would get away with it. It actually started to bother me. “This, I realize, sounds ridiculous,” I told the young lady.  She responded, “Not at all, because you are describing my habit as well, plus I am told its not good for my car, for that matter.”

I am not able to put such personal insights to bed in my mental filing cabinet and am thinking this morning that perhaps my unreasonable battle with the word "empty" illustrates a similar phenomenon of my entire life. I have always wanted to  ignore anything that suggests I am a creature of limitation; I want to challenge every reserve tank and ignore every boundary as long as I possibly can. As a youngster and sometimes still do ward off bedtime though fighting heavy eyelids and perfidious yawns.  As I’ve grown older I have taken the struggle to deeper levels, learning to deflect notions of despair or emptiness, to stifle certain questions in the back of my mind, and to keep my conscience at bay. Like exhausted children insisting I don't need sleep or my challenging the inevitable need for gas, I attempt to defy life's gauges and indicators as if they were indicators of nothing. 

F.W. Boreham wrote a book entitled: The Last Millstone,  tells a story about an old gravedigger whose terrible cough educed the sympathy of a cemetery visitor. But the coughing man simply gestured to the graves around them, noting, "There's plenty here who'd be glad of my cough!" His point is clear enough: even a cough is an indication that life is still present. But all the same, it is a sign that should indicate much more, lest the old man be dragged into a grave of his own. Carrying this thought to a higher place, Boreham wisely comments, "The torments of an aroused conscience are symptoms of spiritual vitality for which a wise man will give thanks on bended knees; but they are useless and worse than useless unless they drive him, in his desperation, to the fountain open for all sin and for all uncleanness."

However good I have become at ignoring signs and indicators within my own life, I am at some level aware that it is more than a sign I am ignoring. To live with gauges that go off for no reason would be absolutely maddening. Pain and conscience, unrest and struggle are gauges given me, I believe, with good purpose. I believe they are indicators that are bidding me to pay attention and can lead me to the place that needs tending. I believe they are also indicators of a designer, whose intention is that I should be lead to health and life and the presence of a design.  

During a time of illness and recovery, King Hezekiah followed his anguished soul to a place beyond physical comfort. In a prayer recorded in the book of Isaiah, Hezekiah recognizes the great lengths God used to drive him to the throne:

"Like a swallow or a crane I clamor,
   I moan like a dove.
My eyes are weary with looking upwards.
   O Lord, I am oppressed; be my security!
But what can I say? For he has spoken to me,
   and he himself has done it.
All my sleep has fled
   because of the bitterness of my soul.
O Lord, by these things people live,
   and in all these is the life of my spirit.
   O restore me to health and make me live!"  Isaiah 38:14

I’m convicted and convinced that there is life to be found even in gauges I would rather ignore. Empty tank or weary conscience, might it drive me into the arms of one who gives life?  

Father, God, this morning I thank Your Spirit that has born these live truths to me.  May my empty tank or weary conscience, drive me into Your arms for a life giving “fill up.”  Amen