Chapter 42 To Form the Perfect Union, Part II

And so, off we go, the effects of my bad, partially consumed margarita beginning to fade, just like the sun in front of us. We’re heading westward, toward what I’m not quite sure.

I do have to smile a little when I think about this Savior, on his own, with me; there’s no intermediary here, no middle man that I can see. I’m touching him, talking to him, and simply overwhelmed with the ease of it all. He’s straight up, no garnish to decorate him or mask his purpose.

That bartender would like him.

We pull into a gas station with one of those convenience marts attached, one that might as well just convert into a super market because they're selling everything in there except for cuts of beef and fresh fish.

I get off the back and lean against the pump and I watch him as he smiles warmly at people filling their tanks all around him; he the very one who knows their story, from start to finish, more intimately than any other. But yet, he keeps his distance. At least for now, sensing some otherworldly resistance, I suppose.

As he starts to remove the gas cap and select his fuel of choice, he looks at me. His eyes are dark, but not black or brown; in fact I can't even really describe the color. The closest I can come to it is the shade of a pre-dawn sky, of night being overcome.

Jeff, let’s get back to the basics.

I was right about this conversation not being over.

I am the embodiment of God’s Word, right?

Yes. I was still thinking about what I should call the color of his eyes. Gotcha.

Disembodied words are not my way.

No, they're not. That I am certain of.

So, what do you notice, then, when you find references to me, the Word, capital W, in the Bible?

He knows I don't know. I don’t read it very often. I'm not proud of it, for obvious reasons. He keeps going anyway.

Look around and you’ll see a lot of action verbs that always show up in the same sentence, like teaching, proclaiming, planting, landscaping, serving, doing, becoming, going, speaking, preaching, prospering, hearing, receiving, revealing.

Wow, I think. Those are all in there?

Yes.

Check. I knew that.

But they’re not all good action verbs. Look a little further and you'll find twisting and watering down.

I definitely know about that.

So, here we go again, and I don't mean to get real simple on you Jeff, but I'm going to anyway. You agreed back when we were riding around the church that you believe it all. How about that verse that says:

For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That's an act of true freedom. (Gal 5:14 The Message)

Yes, I do love it when he gets simple. I still need clarification, though.

So, if I get this straight, you want me to teach, proclaim, plant, landscape, serve, do, become, go, speak, preach, prosper, hear, receive and reveal you, the Word, to others, and you're love?

Correct. And I don’t want you to twist or water me down.

This is all great and wonderful, I think, but I'm still struggling with the whole church thing, you know, lower case c, and the amount of time we put into our disgareements about it.

Jeff, the tug you've felt over the past few months and over your margarita to break out of denomination and religion is always going to occur when you decide that you really want to follow me; when you really want to get this love. There’s just too much freedom in it; whereas, religion, and often the churches which symbolize and contain religion, well, sometimes they look for ways to complicate that.

Yeah, OK, but..

He cut me off, this Creator of the universe. He could tell I was going to complicate it.

Why are we here, Jeff?

I don’t know. We need gas. Here we go, another word picture. But he knows I need them.

Yes, we do. What else?

Uh, I suppose we should check the oil and the tire pressure. Maybe throw out some trash, if we had any trash. I always have a lot of trash in my minivan. Four kids, enough said.

Good. What else?

I guess we could go inside and get pretty much anything we wanted to eat. And we could use the bathroom.

He topped off the tank and looked at me with a knowing look. Here comes the hook.

It’s good to stop isn’t it?

Yes, I guess.

We actually need to stop, don’t we?

Yes.

It’s not an option is it, if we want to keep riding?

No. It’s definitely not an option. Though with gas prices, I might be riding my bicycle soon.

We’ll always need fuel and food for this ride, or we won't get very far. But what happens if we decide to stop riding altogether, and think instead that this station was just a good place for us to stay?

I'm starting to track with him now. Well, we’d have plenty to eat and drink for a while. Lots of gas.

Eventually though, the reason you stopped, would become irrelevant, wouldn’t it? If you’re not going to ride, well then, you don’t need gas for your cycle, do you?

That didn't seem so simple. But I didn't let on.

No. I guess not.

So then what happens?

I just look at him, not really sure what to say. There's an awkward pause because everything I feel about church is still so sacred, so untouchable, so rooted in a formula of a solemn something or another that I dare not untangle it. Without the help of a margarita. And my imagination.

He knows this. He always knows.

Let me just tell you a little about what happens, Jeff.

We start to walk in to the stuff mart in front of us, to pay for our gas and I suppose walk the aisles deciding what we want to eat.

This could get interesting, I think.