I have a friend who is an avid “car guy,” but not in the context of the term that I grew up with. For the guys I hung around with, someone we’d refer to as a “car guy” was someone who had some basic tools and enough know-how to get most of the repairs done that our cars were constantly in need of. For my current friend, being a “car guy” is quite different. To him it describes a person with enough interest, and enough money, to collect cars as both a stimulating piece of nostalgia and a speculative financial investment. 

While taking a walk through our neighborhood a few months ago, a gleaming red, 70’s vintage “muscle car” slowly rolled up alongside me. The window on the passenger side slid down, and I could hear my friend’s voice shouting a greeting over the low rumble of the engine. I walked over and we chatted a bit about the impressive condition of his chariot, and I asked him how many miles it had on it. “No way!” I shouted when he told me that it was less than 200. Then he proceeded to tell me about another classic he owned of a different make that only had 97 miles on it. Truth is, I really don’t know how to relate all that well to people like that, financially or otherwise. 

Another Thought ~
Looking at my friend’s perfectly preserved piece of vehicular artwork in front of me, I couldn’t help but think about the little Honda that had been part of our family for over 20 years. My wife had named her “Exie” because she was an “EX” model and that was how we referred to her throughout our time together. What a contrast she was to the gleaming, no-name vehicle idling in front of me. 

Exie was no pristine, dainty show piece. She was a workhorse. She didn’t come into our household to be fawned over. She came to serve – and serve she did. Throughout her life, Exie consistently did more than she was designed to do. Sometimes she’d pretend to be a truck and haul anything from fertilizer to building materials. Once, we even hooked a strap to her undercarriage and she helped us pull a stump out of the ground. But some of the sweetest times we had together were those times when she became a quiet, secluded sanctuary where we met with God. Whether we needed a place to utter desperate pleas for God’s intervention or in those times when language fails and tears of joy or grief were all we had to offer, she was there for us.

Exie gave all she had right up to the last. After traveling over 450,000 miles with us, she was forced to enter “hospice care” last year, and we had to say goodbye to her. But even when the end finally came, she found a way to keep serving by becoming an organ donor. Her functional parts are still out there somewhere helping to get important things done for someone else…

An Intriguing Contrast ~
I know… It sounds ridiculous to be talking about cars like they’re people when we’re supposed to be exploring profound concepts like love. But the contrast between how the two cars were used presents a graphic illustration of what we often do with the incredible gift of love that God gave us. Exie’s “showpiece” counterpart spends most of its life sitting around in a garage doing nothing. When it’s allowed to come out, it’s only to be hauled on a trailer to a car show where it gets to pose for selfies by people who wish they owned it. Showpieces get admired and praised for how they look, but the power built into them never really gets put to use. 

We seem to treat love like one of those gleaming show cars. We never tire of seeing love put on display. Every art form known to man seeks to display what love is, and we gaze longingly at it and wish we actually owned it. Meanwhile, the living God who gave it and made it available to every one of us is pleading with us to show the world what love does. 

Jesus Was Different ~
Like the Greco-Roman world in Jesus’ time, the prevailing culture in America these days is obsessed with external appearances. For the Romans, practical outcomes were consistently ignored in favor of visual image and maintaining popular trends. Sound familiar? In our day, the fashion industry alone provides a graphic illustration of that. But as is always the case, Jesus was different. 

In the life He lived and in everything He taught, Jesus made it obvious that what we do is always more important than how we look. With Him, work trumps wardrobe and action trumps appearance every time, and when it comes to how He evaluates how we apply and express the love we claim to have, He made that principle fundamental. There’s no way to misconstrue what He said about it:

If you love Me, keep My commandments. (John 14:15 NKJV)

He who has My commandments and keeps them [applies them and makes them a priority], it is he who loves Me. (John 14:21 NKJV)

Since the devil always wants to disarm God’s most powerful defensive and offensive weapons, the problem has permeated every generation since the beginning. The Prophet, Ezekiel, described it like this: 

So they come to you as people do, they sit before you as My people, and they hear your words, but they do not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain. Indeed you are to them as a very lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument; for they hear your words, but they do not do them. (Ezekiel 33:31–32 NKJV)

John reinforces the principle again in simple but direct terms in his first epistle:

But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:16–18 NKJV)

These days, it seems that the love that God intended to be a workhorse has become little more than a showpiece. You might say that we’ve taken the living, vibrant, powerful, and productive vehicle for good that God gave us and parked it in a garage. Bringing it out to be admired once in a while is OK as long as it’s in a protected environment. Showing it off occasionally feels pleasant and rewarding, but those aren’t the kinds of rewards God intended. The rewards God hands out are based on how much it gets done, not on how attractive we can make it look. 

Not a “Car Guy” ~
In this context, we could say that God isn’t a “car guy” like the friend I mentioned earlier. God isn’t impressed with low mileage and a scratch-free finish. The heart of God is moved when He sees love struggling to carry a load that seems too big for it. His favor is gained when He sees love go off-road and plow through weeds to carry some wounded soul to a place where help can be found. When the distance seems too far and the road seems too rough, but love undertakes the journey anyway, God smiles. When love causes tears to stain our cheeks over someone else’s loss, God notices, and He remembers. And like the One who came to embody it, that kind of love doesn’t die. 

When love like that lives in us, it will find its way into others and when we’re gone, the love won’t be. Jesus challenged His followers to love like He did. That challenge includes us, and He didn’t call any of us to follow Him and become showpieces. Showpieces don’t change lives and transform nations. Workhorses do. May God help us to let our love out of the garage and get to work. There may be someone in peril on our path ahead, and they don’t need another song about what love looks like. What they’re dying to see is what it can “do.” 

“TWEETABLES” ~ Click to tweet and share from the pull quotes below.  Each one links directly back to this article through Twitter . . . 

• • “Every art form known to man seeks to display what love is, and we gaze longingly at it and wish we actually owned it. Meanwhile, the living God who gave it and made it available to every one of us is pleading with us to show the world what love does.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)  
  • “Jesus made it obvious that what we do is always more important than how we look. Work trumps wardrobe & action trumps appearance every time. When it comes to how He evaluates how we apply & express the love we claim to have, He made that principle fundamental. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)  
  • “These days, it seems that the love that God intended to be a workhorse has become little more than a showpiece. You might say that we’ve taken the living, vibrant, powerful, and productive “vehicle for good” that God gave us and parked it in a garage.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet) 
  • “The heart of God is moved when He sees love struggling to carry a load that seems too big for it. When love causes tears to stain our cheeks over someone else’s loss, God notices, and He remembers. And like the One who came to embody it, that kind of love doesn’t die.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)  
  • “Jesus challenged His followers to love like He did. That challenge includes us, and He didn’t call any of us to follow Him and become showpieces. Showpieces don’t change lives and transform nations. Workhorses do.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)   

Check out Ron’s book, “Right Side Up Thinking in an Upside Down World ~ Looking at the World through the Lens of Biblical Truth” 

 The Kindle e-version is just $1.99. No Kindle device is needed. E-book readers are included on most computers, tablets, and smartphones. If you don’t have one, the free Kindle app can be easily downloaded directly from the Amazon site on almost any device.

Click here for a “Look Inside” preview at Amazon.

© 2023 Gallagher’s Pen, Ronald L. Gallagher, Ed.S.  All rights reserved.