Thanking the Jerks Around Us

Philippians 3:8
What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ…

I’m still steamed. Saturday night Wendy and I met Phil and Jennifer Baucom at Carrabba’s for our That Youth Thing staff Christmas dinner and had an awesome time. We laughed, ate, and talked about all the good things God has done and is doing. We drank way too much sweet tea (if that’s possible) and even got to know our waitress pretty well (who, for the record, has worked at Carrabba’s long enough to have had, and gotten tired of, every dessert on the menu). Topped off with a stop at Starbucks for coffee and conversation, and it was a fantastic evening. Right up until I asked Wendy for some chapstick while we sat at the light in Richfield about 6 miles from home, and **BAM!!**

It was one of those moments when you know what just happened isn’t something that normally happens, but it’s so out of the norm that you have no idea what it really was. After a couple of seconds, Wendy said we’d been hit, and sure enough I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the headlights of the car that had rear-ended us at the light. As I started to get out of the car, some motion in the mirror caught my eye, and I looked in it to see the headlights getting smaller and smaller. Sure enough, this person that hit us had thrown it in reverse and drove backwards as fast as they could about a tenth of a mile and turned down a backroad. I was stunned!

We got out to inspect the car and saw no major damage, so we thanked the Lord for His faithfulness and went home. The next day, though, we saw the small dent and the chipped paint, and that’s when I realized that I needed to thank the jerk, umm, I mean, person who hit us. Now I don’t want to thank this person for hitting us, or even for running away, because the more I think about it, that makes me want to hit them. But I do know that it is the losing of things that makes us realize how much we’re attached to them, and this whole experience made me appreciate even more the fact that Paul was able to say that he considered everything a loss compared to the greatness of knowing Christ. For me, everything includes a minivan, and I wouldn’t have realized that I was holding it so firmly if a jerk hadn’t knocked it out.

I hope that you are able to enjoy a jerk-free day, but in our culture that seems to be a fleeting thing. They are, it seems, everywhere. They provoke us, they push us, they hurt us. They do all kinds of things that make us want to do all kinds of things back, but the biggest thing that jerks do is help us see how attached we are to our stuff, our rights, our, well, minivans. Maybe instead of just being angry, we could be thankful for seeing that we still need to loosen our grip on what matters less, and strengthen our grip on the Lord.

And so, to all the jerks out there who put us in the place to make that choice, I thank you.

Now, if I could just catch you, perhaps I can knock some sense into you, too!

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