Is Blue Truck on the radio?

The last two summers of my life have been spent at a Christian summer camp in East Texas.  Some people call it Sky Ranch, but almost everyone who spends a summer there ends up calling it home (so cliché, but SO DARN TRUE).  I think I love this place so much because it’s where my relationship with God completely transformed.  It’s where I went after my freshmen of college assuming I needed to earn God’s approval, but came out discovering grace and the true gospel. Realizing there is literally nothing I could ever do to make Him love me more or less.

A few weekends ago I was back at Sky Ranch working a retreat for high school students. As we were walking outside looking for a spot to hang out, we ran into one of my favorite things: the Blue Truck.  I capitalized the letters because that’s the name of the truck, Blue Truck.  Anyways, this summer, we used that truck everyday.  It was our one-stop source for setting up events, for getting firewood for the campfires, for loading hay bales, and a bunch of other campy things of course!

But over this weekend, when I saw that truck again for the first time since summer, I couldn’t help but laugh.  The truck is and was and forever will be a running disaster.  This summer, that truck fell apart on us.  When we were going to set up night events, sometimes the passenger door would just fly open and all kinds of things (and people) would fall out.  And, in the midst of Texas summer heat, the air conditioner was broken.  It only worked if you hit it just right with a hammer.  But after we hit it too hard, cracking the outer surface of the dash, we went to just hitting it with a commercial sized tape dispenser. Which is ridiculous to think about, and right now I’m laughing just remembering it.

Also, the front bumper is falling off.  Like kind of hanging, almost dragging on the ground.  This is mostly due to the fact that on my very first day as leadership staff last summer, I forgot to put it in park and it rolled into a house on camp (where some of the full time staff and camp managers live….a really proud moment for me, obviously).

One of the headlights is broken, I think that one is thanks to Reagan McDonald, and the bed is filled with spilled tiki torch fluid, sticks, and pine cones for making camp fires every single Sunday night for 11 weeks...(also, this sounds like a fire hazard but nothing bad ever happened, don’t worry). 

The horn is broken and the seats are ripped up so much you can see the metal that the cushion is supposed to surround.  There are no seat belts, but it doesn’t matter because the speed limit is an intense 15 mph…and I kind of doubt the truck could go much faster.

The key would always, 100% without fail, get stuck in the ignition, and I would always have to radio for my partner Kyle to come turn it off.  The tailgate also wasn’t reliable, and could open at will…mostly while we were driving somewhere.  Which was just pretty dangerous honestly.  On Monday nights it was covered in oatmeal from the food fight, and somehow we always managed to spill our water bottles on the inside and get the seats soggy.  There is no rear-view mirror, and sometimes it takes a couple tries before the engine will turnover.

But when I look at the truck, I don’t see its flaws the way someone else driving down the road might.  In fact, I love the imperfections.  And I love that so many intentional conversations went down in that truck.  There were tears and all kinds of disagreements and laughs and pranks that happened in that truck. And as I stood and stared at the truck this weekend, a strange thought popped into my head: we can all kind of relate to this truck.  This truck is honestly a complete mess.  There were days when this truck could hardly function, or wouldn’t start, or got a flat tire, but it still somehow made it through.  Kind of like us.  We're falling apart even when we pretend like we're not, we're weak even when we pretend like we've never shed a tear, we are imperfect and undeserving of Christ’s love, but He still uses us and loves us and gives us grace.  His grace freaking abounds everywhere.  Our lives serve a purpose not because we can amount to anything, but because Christ in us is everything.

I love the Blue Truck and the cool ways the Lord has taught me through it.  I like to picture myself as the truck, and God as the proud owner.  Something He'll never give up on or be ashamed of: us.