The Parable of the Mechanic’s Dirty Hands
By Nathan
I’ve had to do a lot of repair work on my truck lately. The engine was leaking coolant, and I traced it to a seal that needed to be tightened from another big repair I had done. I could write another article about why it’s important to take your time and get a torque wrench when putting things back together.
This particular project started out big – probably about 5 hours to get into the engine far enough to tighten 8 little bolts. Then I leaned on a heater tube that went through the firewall of the engine bay into the passenger compartment. It broke off.
A 5 hour project turned into a 10 hour project that involved dismantling most of the dash. Plus, I didn’t have all of the parts that I needed. I wasn’t planning on replacing the heater core or the heater core tubes. So I had to order them. After working from about 9AM to 6PM, I had finished the original project and cut open the dash of my truck. Time to go home for a beer and dinner.
Dirty hands, be gone!
If you’ve ever done car repair, you might know how dirty your hands get when you’ve been digging around in an engine compartment. And all the little scrapes and cuts you get all over your hands without hardly noticing. When I get home, I try not to touching anything, because I leave an indelible trail of black marks.
To clean up, I pull out that orange smelling soap with the ground up pumice in it. Boy, does it make my hands burn, what with all of the cuts. I have to rub the abrasive down in there deep to get all the black junk out. When I rinse my hands, this blackish oozy foam fills the sink. And then I wash them again and this time the sludge is dark gray, but it still hurts. By the third time, it still hurts, but the water washes it clean away.
A parable for spiritual healing.
I think sometimes God wants to give us a deep cleaning and He has to get out the abrasive soap. He works it down into the darkest wounds. And it hurts like no tomorrow, but it’s because of His great love for us. He doesn’t want us to come to the table with our hands dirty. He loves us too much. The process is painful because those wounds just don’t like to be cleaned. But that’s the only way that they’ll heal properly.
I think this truck is like orange soap. God knows how impatient I get and how that interferes with everything that He wants to do in my life. So my truck breaks down. And I fix it. It breaks down again. And I fix it again. What have I replaced on that 2002 Nissan Frontier? Alternator. Power steering pump. Brake calipers. Ball joints. Shocks. Fuel injectors. Radiator. Starter. Fuel pressure regulator. Knock sensor. Idle air control valve. 30 feet of hoses. Spark plugs. It took me 6 hours to replace one spark plug. That daggum number six. I had to remove the hood to get it back in.
My son asked me why I don’t buy a new truck. I have. One engine component at a time. It’s running better than it was two years ago. A lot better. If you’ve ever tried to drive a vehicle with multiple random misfiring, you might know what I mean. It feels like it might explode at any moment. I thought I might, too.
But the bigger change has been in me. I’m a lot more patient. Determined. Calm. Resourceful. I might be fixing the truck, but on another more important level, that truck is fixing me. Perhaps the Living Water is starting to run a little clearer these days.
If you want to read the story of how God snatched me out of darkness, check out Demoniac, now available on Amazon.
