Life is Short - Spend it Well

The early sixties were a great time to be a young person in rural Alabama. It was a time of innocence, romance, and wonder.  Before the decade would end, radical change would take place and the whole culture would change.  Dark times would come with political unrest, protest marches, a growing drug culture, and the hippie movement.  Part of the evil today has grown from these dark and ungodly seeds planted in the sixties.

I remember the start of the seventh grade in 1965.  School started with a musical bang, heavy metal rock and rock was not making a run yet.  A group called the “Vehicles” played rock and roll songs.  For a measly seventh grader the old men who graduated in the spring returned to help indoctrinate us into the world of permanent press clothing, lockers, and having a different teacher for each class.  These four instrumentalists were probably 19 years old.

In the seventh grade, boys shied away from the girls.  Our interest was motorcycles and hot rods.  Old jalopies intrigued me.  Chrome reverse rims were the newest fad for poor boys and Cragar mags for the boys from affluent homes.  A couple of rich kids drove a new car called the Mustang.  Most old jalopies were fifty and forty models, but a few were the early sixties Chevys with v-eight engines and four-in-the-floor speed transmissions.  The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and other sixties musical groups romanticized hotrods.  Every young man’s desire was to own one.  Young people today call it the “Dark Ages.”

Fast forward to the new millennium and today it seems to be the “Dark Ages.”  “Black Opps” have replaced the chrome reverses, big, blacked-out four-wheel drive pickups replaced the Mustang, and foreign sports cars replaced the hotrods.  I recently saw a pickup that the owner had painted his chrome wheels with black spray paint.  Back in my day, everyone hated black rims.  In fact, those of us who had hubcaps used them to hide black rims.

I remember painting the outside of the rim with chrome paint.  Running down the road these red-neck painted rims looked like Cragar Mags.  Some of my friends painted their rims chrome all over and they looked like the chrome reverses.  We wanted to shine!  To paint a real chrome wheel with black paint is just wrong!  Even today, an average old jalopy looks better with a set of shiny chrome wheels. 

Times change with each passing day.  Chrome wheels in the past, “black opps” today, and who knows about the future.  We used to make do with what we had, folks today see, want it, and buy by putting it on the card.  In the sixties, we refurbished an old car by working all summer just to have new interior or new raised white letter tires, today everyone wants new and they want it “NOW.”

Black Opps must be what is trending.  In our world of texting, Facebooking, and Tweeting, comes the term “Going Dark.”  This term did not originate at Kentucky Fried Chicken, white or dark meat.  It means to disappear: to become suddenly unavailable or digitally out of reach for an undefined period of time.  Young people have become so addicted to cell phones that they suffer withdrawal when they do not have one.

I been “Going Dark” for years but did not know I was “Going Dark.”  When folks quiz me about my not answering the phone, reading a text, or returning an e-mail, I would say that I did not want to be reached.  There was a reason I did not answer.

I remember when one of the churches I pastored wanted me to wear a “beeper.”  They were handy devices.  When people wanted to know what my beeper was, I would say that it was a device designed by deacons for tracking their pastor.

Everyday we read or hear of a skirmish captured on video and gone viral.  Can I remind you that film can distort the truth?  Sometimes I think the era of “Big Brother” watching has become a dark reality with iphones, security cameras, drones, and satellites. 

We have gone from hot rods to iphones, chrome to black outs, privacy to “smile you are on candid camera.” The desire to have the latest gadget is more prevalent than we ever imagined.

Our society is geared to make us want what do not have and offers many venues to purchase the desires of our heart.  Is it any wonder that the average credit card debt in Alabama is $30,000?  Just because it is the newest gadget or on sale, doesn’t mean you have to buy it. 

I know people that struggle financially.  They cannot understand that you cannot spend more than you make.  We go into debt where we spend most of our time making money to buy things that promise us to save time.  I texted my oldest son. “Life is short, spend it well. Have a good day. Love dad.”  I sent it because I do not know many people that say, “I wished I spent more time with my job.”

If we are not careful, we will spend our lives wanting what we do not have.  We act like cows grazing in the pasture.  The grass is always greener across the fence.  I repeat, society is geared to make us want what we do not have.  That kind of darkness is not good.

Don’t love the world’s ways.  Don’t love the world’s goods.  Love of the world squeezes out the love for the Father.  Practically everything that goes on in the world – wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important – has nothing to do with the Father.  It just isolates you from Him.  The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out – but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity (I John 2:15-17 The Message).