Fifteen years old.  95 degrees in central Texas.  What a great day to ride my bike.  After about 50 miles of fun and careless dehydration, I was heading home.  Riding down this small hill I felt the wind in my face and I stood up on my bike to get the full effect.  It was great.  At the bottom of the hill I realized that my legs had locked up, so I coasted as far as I could and fell.  hard.  on the asphalt.  bike on me. 

So, here I was laying on the side of the highway with ants and blood all over my cramping legs when a car pulls up beside me.  “Hey, we saw you fall.  Do you want some help?”

“No thanks, I’m fine.  Just resting my legs.”  What?  As soon as I said it, I realized how bone-headed it was.  I’m not fine.  I was hurting.  But I was too ashamed to let anyone help me.  (they knew it too)  Explicatives on stupidity are not enough to describe me in this pride-filled state.  It took me about 15 minutes to recover enough to start walking toward home.  Ten more minutes and a truck came by full of people that refused to listen to me when I said everything was ok.  They put my bike in the back of the truck (and me too) and took me home.

We live in a Do It Yourself world.  Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.  Read a book and change your alternator, or your porch, or your marriage.

The church seems to exist in this world as well.  This is the era of the non-denominational church.  Don’t let history, or denomination, or the old guard dictate what you do.  You are a church with no ties to tell you how to minister.

We like “do it yourself faith”.  No accountability.  No heritage.  No “sins of the father”.  Just me, trying to find Jesus – or some god that fits my schedule and preferences, my likes and dislikes.  

Never realiizing what everyone else knows: that we are on the side of the road bloody and broken and ashamed and paralyzed.  

The “do it yourself” attitude is great.  BUT, what if I am so involved in DIY that I have forgotten how to ask for help?

Jesus will come along with His pickup ready to take you home.  Are you going to get in or are you going to do it yourself?

Jesus, give me a ride.  Amen.