car – Grits with Grace

Family, Grace, gratitude, life, Scripture, sovereignty of God, thankful

Amazing Grace

Posted on December 20, 2024December 9, 2024 by Dewayne Taylor

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Matthew 10:29-30

It’s worth telling again. In the early days of Grits, before the Grits Facebook page and before the website, I wrote a story about something that happened on a Friday. And trust me…it was pretty amazing. You see, I’m one of those people who believe that God is always working. And on that particular day, I think He looked down from heaven and decided I was going to need a little extra help. It goes like this.

So, it was Friday and my wife Judy tricked me into some really laborious yard work. I kinda volunteered to rebuild a flower bed and ended up being drafted to build a sidewalk next to the flower bed. It involved moving and setting 28 of those 16 by 16 concrete paving things and 15 of those blocks that you use to build a wall. Well, several hours later we had a sidewalk and a small wall with a new flower bed. It looks awesome. She was tired…I was exhausted.

I showered up, sat on the couch for a while and then decided I needed to pick up the garage. Our nightly vacation rental property is over our garage and due to a lack of storage space there were several containers of winter decorations from there that had taken up residence. Either the car or the containers had to go. I voted for the containers.

So, I pulled both cars out of the garages (yes garages…we have two…go figure.) In the smaller garage where my car is parked there is a storage shelf–an obvious new home for the stuff that Judy had put in the other garage. Well, to make a long story shorter I started rearranging the shelf to make room for the stuff. Finally, I began to move the heavy containers and I began to mutter. It went like this, “I’m too tired to be messing with this stuff. I didn’t create the mess so why am I having to fix it.” Honestly, I got just a little mad.

So, I finally got everything where it would now live but there were three winter doormats still on the floor. I picked them up and carried them to the basement in our house. I came out to finish and close up shop. As I looked in my garage–there it was. I had a tool rack mounted on the wall. It held rakes, shovels, brooms, clippers…you name it. It was seven feet long and heavy. I hadn’t touched it but there it was on the garage floor–all of it. It didn’t fall down–it fell out–right where my car would have been if it had been in the garage. Trust me it would have left more than a few small scratches. We are talking “lions and tigers and bears–oh my.”

So, my first thought was what in the world happened? Well obviously, the wall anchors holding the rack had failed. But my second thought–literally–was my car wasn’t in the garage for one reason–I had cleaned up Judy’s mess. If I hadn’t done that–it would have been, well, never mind. Now I drive a five-year-old vehicle by choice, but I have always tried to take care of our vehicles. I figured if I am going to drive an older car it might as well look good.

So, I am amazed–not that I got the garage picked up; not that the thing with the tools fell off the wall, but that my Father carefully orchestrated a series of events to make sure my car wasn’t in the way. “Dewayne, do you really think that God cares about such things?” No…I don’t think…I know. And that’s not all. I am certain that when I finally get to heaven, I am going to be amazed at the things He did that I didn’t even know about.

Now I know we continue to be frustrated and maybe even discouraged about the events that surround us. Just remember what Jesus said in Matthew 10:29-30 “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

Fear not. Hey, crazy world…fear not. Hey, uncertain future…fear not. Watch out new normalcy…fear not. Higher gas prices…fear not. Remember, if you know Jesus then God knows you. You can call Him Dearest Father and He calls you His child. Trust me, you are of more value to Him than many sparrows. So, rest in Him. He can move cars and mountains. He’s got this. Bro. Dewayne

Family, forgiveness, Grace, life, Scripture, thankful, Trials, wisdom

Between a Rock & a Hard Place

Posted on July 15, 2021July 14, 2021 by Dewayne Taylor

Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God—who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly—and it will be given to him.” James 1:5

Dewayne, we have a problem.” It was Judy got my attention as I was going out to the garage to get something. I think I know how it must have felt when the crew of Apollo 13 uttered those now famous words, “Houston…we have a problem.” I had started painting our upstairs bathroom. You need to know I am no Michelangelo, and this was not going to be a Mona Lisa. Into that melee came the news. “We” have a problem.

I quickly explained to Judy that I didn’t have time for a problem. My paint was drying and some of it was in the wrong place, like the floor. She told me there was a cat trapped in her car. Wait. What? Now the night before she had told me she saw a cat go in our garage and I should check before I closed it up for the night. About 9.30, I went out and did the “here, ktty, kitty” thing, shined my flashlight around in the corners and such. No cat. “Good.” I said. Or not.

Now it turns out our homeless friend didn’t move on—he moved in. The crazy part was that it took up residence in the engine compartment of her car. Silly cat. I was going to say, “Stupid cat” but I thought you might think me harsh. So anyway, I left the drying paint in the bathroom to attempt a rescue. It was about then that I discovered why it is so expensive to work on Volkswagen cars. You open the hood to only discover that every square inch is stuffed with something. And somewhere in all of that was the cat. Silly cat.

A friend was there with Judy and all three of us looked and prodded, we called and cooed and saw nothing, we just heard the occasional meow of the cat. Judy volunteered to look if I jacked up the car to see if we could see underneath. I did and she couldn’t. It was time to call in the calvary. I called my neighbor Jared, who manages a local tire place. Surely, he would have an idea. As we waited for him to arrive, we continued to prod and poke, coo and call. In my sweetest voice I kept saying, “Hey silly cat, come here silly cat.” I wanted to say stupid cat, but I was trying to be Christian about this whole deal.

Then it happened. The cat, who turned out to be the cutest kitten south of Chicago wiggled out of its tight spot and ran to the corner of the garage. We then moved from poking and prodding under the hood to poking and prodding in the corner filled with stuff we didn’t need. Cute or not this kitten was about to mash my button. Not to bore you with details but four grown adults spent the next ten minutes chasing this cute little silly cat from one corner of the garage to the other. From behind the washer and dryer to the corner of no return, we played hide and seek. Finally, the cute little kitten saw the light of day, ran through our friends hands and legs and out the door. Game. Set. Match.

The cute little silly kitten was on the run and that was all that mattered. Jared went back to work, the ladies went on with life, and I went upstairs to scape dried paint off the floor and I know I heard this kitten laughing from across the street. So, what is up with all this? Surely the kitten knew better. Surely, he or she knew the danger of living under the hood of a car- but probably not. To the cute little kitten, it was just a place to hide.

You see the kitten wasn’t silly, the kitten wasn’t stupid (well, not really stupid anyway). The kitten just lacked experience. It was naive. It hadn’t lived long enough to understand the dangers of garage living. And do you know what? That is true of a lot of us. Solomon, the wisest guy to ever live, wrote in Proverbs, “I saw among the inexperienced, I noticed among the youths, a young man lacking sense.” And the crazy part was that it had nothing to do with age. We have all made some crazy decisions at one time or another. Too often we just throw common sense to the wind and well, we end up with a train wreck.

The good news is that God is in the train wreck avoidance business. That’s what He led the half-brother of Jesus to write in James 1:5, “Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God—who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly—and it will be given to him.” If we would do that one simple thing, we could avoid a lot of painful situations. Just stop for a moment, ask God if this is the wise thing to do, and wait for an answer. By the way, silence might be an answer, so don’t miss it.

Well, I hope our cute little kitten found a new place to live and hopefully it wasn’t in someone’s engine compartment. And I hope we will learn to trust a wise, loving Father to give us the wisdom we need to live better lives with fewer regrets and better consequences. You know He loves you, don’t you? He wants you to come to Him and rest in the safety of His arms. He wants you to know He has this. And He does. Bro. Dewayne

Family, forgiveness, life, loving others, Scripture

The Ding Doctor

Posted on August 21, 2020August 20, 2020 by Dewayne Taylor

Come, let’s settle this,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are crimson red, they will be like wool.” Isaiah 1:18

Remember to keep your eye on the ball. That’s a really important truth if you are playing baseball but if you are pulling into your garage…well, there’s more to it than that.

Several years ago I was coming home from work at the office. As I was pulling into the driveway I noticed that my granddaughter Faith, who was only seven at the time, was playing in the garage. Ever the careful Papa, I stopped to give her plenty of time to get clear of the car. She was playing with her wagon and then moved the wagon out of my way.

Our my garage isn’t very deep, so I have a tennis ball hanging from the ceiling to remind me how far I can pull forward before hitting the wall. It’s a great idea…I probably need to patent it. So like a cruise ship captain I carefully began to dock the ship. I had my eyes on two things. First, my granddaughter Faith. She was well out of the way, but again, you can’t be too careful. The other was the tennis ball. When the ball touched the windshield it was time to stop. It was a great plan. Almost.

You see, something had changed and I didn’t know it. Unknown to me, Faith had wrapped the cord that was holding the tennis ball around something and it moved the ball toward the wall and away from the car just about a foot. So…I watched Faith—check. I watched the ball—check. The one thing I didn’t watch was the wall. Oops.

You can see this one coming. I hit the wall. Now I was going really slow, so theoretically, I should have survived with little or no damage. Well, theoretically anyway. You see, before the wall was a hot water heat radiator. I had figured that into the equation when I had hung the ball so no deal. But, and it was a BIG but, sitting on top of the radiator was a leaf blower. Now wait…don’t give me that look. Don’t you store your leaf blower on top of your radiator? Well anyway, when I hit the radiator, the leaf blower fell onto my hood—my nice shiny, dent-free hood and I gave birth to a nice, large ding—dead center and about a foot up from the front edge. Bummer.

Yup, bummer indeed. There I was trying to do all the right things and ended up messing up big time. You probably aren’t aware of this, but I am pretty particular about my car and that ding might as well have been the size of a moon crater. I was devastated. If that ding had been anywhere but the hood, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal but there it was—for all to see and ask about. Can you imagine explaining that one? My once perfect hood was no longer perfect—and it was obvious. That’s one thing about dings—they are usually very obvious—especially on nice shiny hoods. Sigh.

Did you know we have something in common with my dinged car hood? Yup, we all have dings. There’s not a perfect one in the bunch. The Bible says “All have sinned…” We are all “dinged up”. As a matter of fact, unlike my hood which was perfect, we were born dinged. And not only that. We constantly get more dings every day. We are like a ding factory. The question now becomes, “what are we going to do about it?” One thing was obvious, I couldn’t fix that ding and we can’t fix our sin problem either. So what’s the answer? Well, I found the Ding Doctor.

My friend Terry told me about a guy who could get dings out of doors, hoods, or whatever. I went to see him and amazingly, with a lot of skill, he was able to make that ding disappear—vanish—like it was never there. After he had worked his magic, I couldn’t thank him enough. But I know something better than that. There is another Ding Doctor who can take care of our sin dings. His name is Jesus. No matter how big the failure, no matter how massive the sin—He is ready and willing to forgive us. And when He gets done…well, believe it or not, you are “better than new”. God says in the book of Isaiah which is in the Old Testament part of the Bible “Come, let’s settle this,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are crimson red, they will be like wool.” How about that?!

Just saying, if you get a ding in your car, you might want to check out the Ding Doctor. If you have managed to ding up your life, and remember we all have, you might want to see THE Ding Doctor. There is not a life ding He can’t fix or a sin He can’t forgive. If your ding looks like a total loss—don’t give up. Trust me, He can take care of it. He’s got this.

Family, Grace, gratitude, life, Scripture, thankful, travel

Mustang Sally

Posted on August 9, 2020 by Dewayne Taylor

Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you your heart’s desires.” Psalm 37:4

It was a dream come true. Several years ago, I was invited to speak at a conference way up north in Illinois. How far north? Well just about as far as you can go. It seems you could see the Artic circle from where we were going. For some reason, it might have been the car was due an oil change or just because, I decided to rent a car for the trip. I checked the local Enterprise car rental and they had a great rate, so I booked one online. About 4:00 pm I went to the car rental place to pick up my plain Jane little car and that’s when I found that God had sent a love note.

I went into the office and waited just a moment for the agent to help me. She shuffled some papers around and said, “You know I don’t have a compact car to give you. I’m going to have to give you a Mustang convertible instead.” I couldn’t believe it. I had wanted to drive a Mustang since I was 12. While I didn’t get to own it permanently, for three whole days it was mine. I felt like I had just won the lottery!

We finished up the paperwork and she handed me the keys. I walked outside and there she sat. A new Mustang convertible with all the bells and whistles! I felt cool just holding the keys. I mashed the button on the remote and lights came on and the doors unlocked. I opened the door and slid into the seat and was pretty certain I had died and gone to heaven. One of the first things I noticed was the quality of this American made car. Things had certainly changed since the 70’s.

The Mustang had more incredibly cool gadgets than I had ever seen in one car. Gadgets like an incredible audio system, totally cool wheels, auto/manual shift, backup camera, keyless entry and start and on and on. It seemed that everything you could possibly want on a car was there. This thing was “tricked out”. For those who don’t know what that term means, it is something like it was customized–loaded with options and believe me it was! Not only had God given me the car of my dreams for three whole days but He had sent one that was loaded!

Well, we made the trip and I played Mr. Cool the entire time. Sunglasses, my best smile and the coy look that said, “Oh yeah, it’s mine.” I just didn’t share that it was only mine for three days. Just as all good things have to come to an end, on Monday my Cinderella Mustang had to go back to Enterprise. However, I will never forget the time that God sent me a Mustang to drive. It gave new meaning to that place in the Bible where it says, “Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you your heart’s desires.”

Now imagine my surprise when I went to the Ford website and discovered that my Mustang wasn’t “tricked out” at all. In fact, all those cool features were “standard.” In other words, every Mustang had those features included with no extra charge. How about that–buy the car and get the options–not some plain Jane, “let’s crawl to the next light Mustang”, but one that caused people to look…”a head turner.” Buy the car and get the cool throw in with the deal. I can remember when the base price got you four wheels and engine. Not so anymore. Ford did a great job in the quality and what you got for the money–but not to the point I’m ready to go out and buy one.

Here’s the deal: God trumps Ford hands down–not even in the ball park. I sometimes wonder if we understand all that we get when we receive God’s amazing grace through His Son Jesus: unconditional love, peace beyond understanding, unlimited acceptance, an incredible purpose and reason to live, the opportunity to make a difference–to be a part of something so big that we can’t even understand it all. And that is not just for the Billy Grahams of the world but rather for every believer, every follower of Christ. Amazingly, that’s not even the tip of the iceberg!

Some people love to drop names—you know, they are talking and they will say how they know so and so. Well, check this out. If you know Jesus, you know the creator of it all. And you just don’t know Him…you know Him up front and personal. And His Father is your Father and He is your Dearest Father. He just waits for you to talk with Him every day. And He enjoys blessing you. Be sure and thank Him for the fact that the life He gives us is not barebones but loaded to the max. You know, when God does something, He always does it well and does it big–how about that?

As you journey this week, how about spending some time celebrating and thanking God for His incredible, unbelievable salvation? And if you get just a tad overwhelmed—and honestly who doesn’t—just remember who you know and Who knows you. You can rest in Him. He’s got this.