I just read another devotion by Ann Voskamp, the writer of “One Thousand Gifts”. It was about time. How it rushes and we get all swept up in it, head spinning, with its ever pressing pace and the things we must get done.
It is the space where we say things we shouldn’t, we are unkind, our voices get harsh, gentleness leaves our hearts and impatience grows and grace withers and retreats as if it can no longer survive in such inhospitable soil. Ann says the only way to slow that energy-spending pace of time is to wade in and be present in it and the mass of you and your struggle to just show God you love Him, slows time down. It just does. I read that and immediately I was transported back to that breakfast table on Bois Blanc Island with Barb and Chuck Maki and our friend Heidi.
Barb had just prayed about the water calming from the storm but she could still tell from its motion that God was on the move. I mentioned two devotions ago that if God is on the move he probably wants us to be too.
Seems reasonable but not always when Chuck Maki is involved with something. 
According to Chuck, his face holding a look that you just can’t decipher. This is a tricky time with Chuck, because after years of being around him, I just know he’s going to get me in a way I don’t suspect. But I do leave myself wide open, don’t I Chuck?
According to Chuck, his face holding a look that you just can’t decipher. This is a tricky time with Chuck, because after years of being around him, I just know he’s going to get me in a way I don’t suspect. But I do leave myself wide open, don’t I Chuck?So, he just says, “God is on the move when you are not.” It hangs in the air for awhile after silence returns. No more; that’s it.
Some of us (me) are pondering hard, frantically trying to figure out what he’s cooking up now to bring at us. Barb is calm, this has been part of her life now for a long time, (61 years or some crazy long period) she is ready to wait and calmly continues breakfast as if nothing has her shimmy shirt in a knot. She even has a half smile on her face – I am intently noticing all the details – alert for any shred of a clue.
If you don’t know Chuck, understand that most of his life he has held a fascination for cars, and in the barn not far from where we’re eating breakfast and having a rather less than clear conversation, sits a Model A and two Model Ts. Two fully restored by Chuck and Friends, I will say.
Chuck now begins to speak of taking those old cars out for drives on the island. My brain has whiplash, my fairly expressive face is doing its job by eyes widening and popping, my forehead crinkles and many other horrible things happen before I remember to take Barb’s lead and smile calmly and carry on. “BUT,” my mind screams silently, “Weren’t we just talking about God being the move when we are not? What does driving those wonderful old cars on the island have to do with anything?”
Well, a word to anyone who ever finds themselves in this spot. . . . wait for it.
All of a sudden, Barb has switched alliances and talks of how you never knew what was going to happen when you went on a jaunt around the island with one of those cars – “they’d just stop on you! Who knows where you’d be stranded!” Truly, it could be just about anywhere and many of the roads are not much more than paths rooted and treacherous. Barb said the boys don’t want to mess with their unreliability but she said she and Chuck went all over in them. “We didn’t worry.” Chuck chimes in helpfully that they even carried a special tow bar with them.
I smile bemusedly and can’t even look at Heidi to see if she is following this.
Now, only just now, I see that look in Chuck’s eye that I have seen many times before and for the sake of adding more confusion into this story, I will just say that I suddenly realize that Chuck is about to land his fish and he is serious when he is landing a fish. Yes, I wrote that right in this tale of time rushing, turned to God moving, turned to antique cars not moving, turned to landing fish. Why not just muddle things a bit more? As I say. . . wait for it.
Chucks says more loudly now, “If you want to put your faith out there and get it moving, just take an old car out on the island.” Silence.
“If the car quits, someone will come along eventually and (island style) they will offer to help you out(I imagine this is where the special tow-bar comes into the picture), it takes some time to hook everything up and you begin to talk and during this process, you get to know each other a little bit and bridges are built.
“Well, by the time you have been hauled home, you are pretty near friends and it’s easy to say to this fellow islander, ‘Have you heard about the Coast Guard Chapel? We meet on Sundays, why don’t you come on by, we’ll be there and we’ll be happy to see you!’”
I know I started this long ago but it’s so worth sticking it out to the end because Chuck has just laid an amazing lesson on us. This is how God is on the move when you are not. You have placed yourself in a place of vulnerability, almost daring that antique car to stop on you so you can catch a fish. Just a touch Biblical wouldn’t you agree?
And you may be stopped for awhile, so just like Ann Voskamp, Chuck and Barb waded into the rush of time and slowed it forcefully with God’s blessing so seeds had time to be sown, and God’s grace had time to flow.
That breakfast was not rushed either so that Chuck had time to share the grace with which he and Barb had ‘almost’ intentionally slowed time and were ‘all in’ with the presence of God to share with those who stopped to help them.
Now, that’s what I call amazing grace, Maki-style. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if we took a page from their book. He is always generous.
~Shauna Weil