there's this man in my neighborhood. he's older. he's retired. for close to two years i've run by his house and watched him work on his antique car. its a model t. he stands in his driveway with sand-paper in one one hand a water-hose in the other. he uses the water hose to rinse off the dust he creates on the car with the sand-paper.
when you look at him you can barely see him moving. and as for the car ... you can hardly tell he's doing anything to it. i literally look at him every time i run by his house and think to myself that he's not making any progress. i'm serious, he's been doing this for two years! the car is faded ... covered in old paint ... covered in rust. you never see him make any progress.
then one day there was a change ... i was cooling down from a run, walking by his house, and i saw something different. there was paint on the car! i mean beautiful paint. the old car that was rusty and ugly for two years had paint on it. it was shining! a dark, rich, smooth paint job. i mean this car looks like new. the weird thing about it, the change just happened over night.
no wait ... the change took two years, it didn't happen over night. the change took two — long — years. this older man, living the last stage of his life, standing in his drive-way slowly brought this old car back to life. little steps, taken slowly made the difference.
as soon as i saw the change i felt God whisper in my ear that he wanted me to learn from this man. He had a great lesson for me. one of my takeaways was simple — God is working on me and He's in no hurry. time is in His hands and not in mind. the man in the drive-way never appears to be in a hurry, and please understand, he's living the last stage of his life. it seems like he would hurry up. maybe pay someone to do it for him. instead, he walks at a slow pace. he takes time and meditates on tiny little parts of the car he wants to improve. this cool old man is in control. i think God does the same thing with me.
i am extremely visual. i need God to draw me a picture sometimes and i think he did just that for me with this man and his car. i am learning so much about God and so much about me.
little by little he's making me like Him. i love the way He moves!
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