But it doesn't come with a warranty.
Perhaps, since my husband is a mechanic, after 25 years of marriage I'm finally beginning to think in terms of cams, hams, and yams - as he often teases me when I try to parrot the little mechanic-ese that comes so naturally to him. Which I don't do very often, trust me! I know that when I start slinging words around like "piston", "camshaft", and "rotors" I'm just throwing foreign terms out into the ether. If anyone called my hand on those terms and tried to actually discuss them with me, I would soon have to admit my ignorance!
But "warranty" - ah! There's a word I can grasp!
This wasn't always true. When I bought my first used car, a Volkswagon Super Beetle, I saw a sign on the wall behind the salesman's desk and naively wondered what on earth it meant. The sign said, "A warranty on a used vehicle is about as useful as a dead cockroach." I found out what it meant when I proudly drove my first vehicle home and just a few blocks from our house, the horn started honking on it's own and refused to stop!A few years later, when I bought my first new car, I was a lot more savvy! I knew about warranties and asked about the fine print. It all looked good to me. Until the valves on my car went out, exactly one month after the warranty on my car expired.
Warranties are of limited value and no warranty is, of course, of no value.
Our bodies come with no warranties. I've been reminded of this several times this week.
Sometimes I think that we kid ourselves into thinking, well our health is good for at least 20, maybe 30 years. We may not put that into words but we do say things jokingly like, "After thirty (or forty or fifty or sixty), it's all down hill." Which implies that up until 30 or so, our bodies should function well.
But I follow the story of a little girl, someone who truly deserves the word "hero" - a word that I think is bandied about all too easily in our society and that I do not use lightly- and she's only a third grader - almost. Yet Haley is fighting cancer with an aplomb that amazes me. Really. Sometimes the things she draws and the hilarious videos that she makes leave me laughing and crying at the same time. She honestly astounds me - another word I don't use lightly.
Still, when I see her spunky smile and her beautiful face, I can't help but wish that our bodies did come with warranties.
They don't. But our souls do.
If we belong to Jesus, then our soul has a pretty nice warranty - good for the next eternal gazillion miles or so. Basically an unlimited guarantee that all the parts that don't work here, will work there. And since Heaven is so much greater than earth, we will function so much better than we've ever done here on earth. Those who are blind now, will see there. And what they will see!!! The Bible says that God has prepared things for us that no eye has seen and no ear has heard. (I Cor. 2:9)
Someday, we will all see. And it will be as if we had never seen before.
Someday the lame will walk, the sick will be whole, the deaf will hear... on and on it goes. Our soul warranty is literally, out of this world.
But in the meantime, since there are no warranties here on earth for our physical bodies, maybe we should make the most of the warrant-less time that we have down here.
By that I mean, hugs are good. Smiles, too. And a listening ear. All those things that don't make money or get "the job done" but show, by their existence, that yes, we know there are no guarantees in this life and yes, we'll make the most of the time we have with each other now, while we have the chance.
There used to be a beer commercial that said essentially: this drink's for you.
I'm afraid this blog is not for you but rather for me.
Hoping I'll be more tuned into others and less tuned in to self as I walk through this warrant-less world.
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