Lost your keys lately?

“Never lose your nerve, your temper or your car keys” 

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

I have been driving by this sign outside a nearby church for couple of weeks now. The first time I thought is was  ‘cute’. The second and third time however I started to wonder just what it meant that gave it a place on a church sign. ‘Nerve’ could be translated as ‘fear not’ while ‘temper’ could fall under the ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you. After all who likes it when someone loses their temper at them! But the car keys? Was that just a throw away line, something to make you smile as you read it? After all, who among us has not misplaced, if not actually lost their car keys, with all the angst that brings with it.

But perhaps, just perhaps, the car keys are actually the main point.  When we lose them there is the resulting inconvenience, cost [especially in these days of car keys with micro-chips], disruption, and blame. Once they are found or replaced, then life can go on as before. so if we lose our car keys our life as we know it stops until they are found. We have essentially lost control.

So what these ten words are telling me in effect is: don’t be afraid, treat others as I want them to treat me, and don’t lose control of my life! Hmmmmmm????

But maybe losing the car keys is actually what I should be doing. Maybe, just maybe, I am not meant to be in the driver’s seat. Maybe there is a more counter-intuitive way to live. 

In a recent post the author Robin Meyer referred to Jesus as a ‘god-crazed misfit’. Doesn’t sound like somebody who should be in the driver’s seat to me! Yet as people who call ourselves Christians, we are by definition ‘ones who professes belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ’ [Merriam -Webster dictionary] As it says in 1 John 2:6  about Jesus ’whoever says, ‘I abide in him’, ought to walk just as he walked.’

Now a ‘god-crazed misfit’ doesn’t sound all that interested in control. He sounds just like someone who would hang out with the outcasts, those who no one in polite society will have anything to do with. Someone who would heal people both before they asked and without pay. Someone who would wander the countryside  with a rag-tag bunch of followers relying on the generosity of others for his very sustenance. Someone who was anti-establishment enough to take on the might of the Roman Empire, knowing that he probably couldn’t win.

So perhaps what that message on the church sign should be saying to Christians today is “Never lose your nerve, or your temper, just your car keys!!”