In the middle of Materialism, I found JOY

A few days ago a friend of mine asked me if I would help him change the oil on his car. Its been a while since I have done much work on a car but I figured that a simple oil change wouldn't be to hard. I was all in and a bit excited to be able to work on a car again.  It might sound strange, but working on a car can be quiet relaxing for me. After a rough week at school, the idea of relaxing and working on a car was sounding great. I met up with my friend Will at his place and found out that we would be headed over to one his friend's apartment so we could use his set of car ramps. As we pulled out of our apartment complex (Will and I live in the same complex) and headed north, I quickly noticed the change in scenery. 

Our apartment complex is tucked in a nice little area just north of Downtown Dallas. We are actually less than 5 minutes from a very upscale mall and many fine dinings, such as the Cheesecake Factory and Magiannos. We truly live down the street from million dollar homes and the beautiful campus of SMU. All of these luxuries are pretty much to the South and East of where we live. When you head north though, as we were, the scenery actually changes to that of low income neighborhoods and apartment complexes. The wealth and materalism you see and experince just five minutes away from our place was fading into shops with boards over the windows and broken down cars in the street. As we wove our way through these back streets, I just sat there and took it all in. 

I began to think, we are living very a comfortable life, very close to so much wealth and at the same time so much poverty.  Within about 7 minutes from my front door we were at Will's friend's place. The apartment complex looked so much different than ours. Windows broken, trash in the streets, and no landscaping.  Just a rusted gate blocking the entrance.  We pulled up in front of his friend's apartment and I instantly noticed the many kids riding their bikes.  Sitting in front of the apartment we were going into were three young boys on there bikes just hanging out.  They were hanging out there, we found out, because Will's friend was helping them fix there bikes.  We introduced oursleves to the three young boys and soon found out they were from Tanzania. Will and I then proceeded to get his car up on some ramps to get to work.  The three young boys watched curiously as Will and I got the car up on ramps and began to drain the oil.  The next thing I noticed, was there were about 8 more kids, all with bikes, just sitting around watching us drain the oil.  Some of the kids were African and some from Israel, all speaking in English but mixed with their home languages as well.  Not one of the bikes were brand new.  We actually heard two of the kids get into an argument on who found the bike in the trash first!  As Will changed the oil and let it all drip out, I began to talk to all the kids just to find out more about them and where they came from.  When all the oil drianed out, Will's friend suggested that the kids use the old oil to oil the chains on there bikes.  Within seconds the kids had discovered about 15 different ways to get the oil onto their bike chains.  With huge smiles on their faces, they grabbed whatever they could in order to transfer the oil to their bike chains.  One by one they all oiled the chains and took off on their bikes with huge smiles and thanks that there bikes no longer made loud squeeking noises.  I was truly amazed that what was old, used oil to us, became such a gift to them.  

I began to think about my life and all I that I have and how ungrateful I am for much of it. And here, the children were thankful for old oil.  It was a humbling thought.  I also began to think about the importance of the materials in my life.  The question came to mind.  Am I truly satisfied in Christ and is He all I will ever need?  I think if I were to truly answer that question in that moment, I would say, I really don't think about the sufficiency of Christ often in my life.  There I was  being humbled and challanged with this thought. 

 Do I cling unknowingly to materialism or do I hold onto Christ? I was being deeply challanged. If this experince wasn't enough, later that night at church the message was on the sufficiency of Christ.  God has really opened my eyes lately to the idea that all I need is Christ. Throughout the book of Philippians, Paul presses this idea of Christ's sufficiency even to the point of saying all else is loss apart from knowing Christ.  It took some kids being thankful for old car oil to open my eyes to how tightly I hold onto the "stuff" in my life, and how I don't meditate daily on how all sufficient Christ is for everything in my life.   

Steve