accident

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I Don’t Know What I Should Do

I’m sitting here this morning unsure of what to do.

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Last night my car got rear-ended. It wasn’t a big hit; there are no aches and pains resulting from the jolt.  

But the guy who hit me doesn’t want me to report it … he doesn’t want the demerit points.  

There’s a big part of me that wants to be nice and make it easy on the guy. But there is another part of me that wonders if I will be screwed over if I don’t report it and go through the regular channels.

If the accident had have happened on a weekday, I would be getting an estimate right now and calling the guy, asking how he is going to pay for it all. But it’s the weekend and I don’t think I’m going to find a collision shop that’s open.  

Plus, I am going away for a couple of days at the first of the week and that will delay an estimate even longer. 

I’m thinking time is of the essence. I have to know if this guy is going to pay for my car to get fixed or if I need to just report it and have the insurance worry about it.

As it is right now, the latch closes on the trunk but it doesn’t lock. The screen on the dashboard constantly shows a picture of the trunk being open.

I don’t want to be mean, but I don’t want to get left holding the bag, so to speak. 

I think I will try the dealership where I bought the car to see if someone there can give me an estimate of the cost. Then I will visit the guy who cuts my hair – he’s a real car guy. I’ll get him to take a look at it and see if he has any advice.

Other than that, I really feel in limbo right now. I’m a little nervous about waiting too long if I am going to report the accident. And I’m nervous about trusting this guy to come through.

He seemed so matter-of-fact about everything – like he’d done this often and it’s no big deal.

He said he was sorry but it was one of those sorries where you see the lips moving but are not sure there is any genuine feeling behind them.

It was almost like this was an inconvenience to him, and he wanted to wrap things up quickly so he could get to whatever he was going to do.  

In reality, there wasn’t much inconvenience to him at all. I doubt that there was any damage to his vehicle. He was driving a Jeep with big bars protecting his grill.

All the inconvenience is mine. If I don’t report this and he jams on me, this will be way beyond an inconvenience. I really need to make the right decision today.

Here’s the thing: Many times we act like the guy who hit my car. With sin, we are the ones at fault, but we act like it’s no big deal, and that it’s just an inconvenience to us. In reality, it was an inconvenience for Christ to go to the cross to pay for our sin. When I say “inconvenience” for Him, I mean way beyond inconvenience – a million times more. So when we sin and feel like it’s a minor infraction, think again at what it cost Christ to rectify that minor infraction for you.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How would you assess your attitude to God when seeking His forgiveness? Leave your comments and questions below.

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Is The Whole Greater Than All Its Parts?

You’ve heard the phrase “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. The quote goes back a long time; it’s from Aristotle. But let me spin it another way.

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More recently, we associate this phrase with synergy – the idea that when people work together what they produce is greater than what they could collectively do on their own.

In music when a group of jazz musicians jam together they feed off each other and create a sound that is greater than what they could produce on their own instruments.

This is why team work is so important when working on projects, in sports or pretty much anything.

However, this principle is opposite when it comes to fixing something.

The whole costs less than the sum of its parts … and that’s the phrase that’s more on my mind these days.

A week ago I wrote a post about the car accident I had with a deer (you can read it here). I kind of thought that my car won that fight. I mean, I think the deer probably lived but it was banged up more than my car … but perhaps I was a little hasty with that thought.

In the wisdom of the collision appraiser, he thinks the car has more damage than it’s worth. In other words, it will cost as much to fix the car as it would to buy one of the same vintage.

Basically what they are saying is that the sum of the parts needed to fix my car costs more than the whole car is worth … and really we are only talking about four parts on the car! It still runs as well as it did before.

So if I bought all the individual parts the car needs it would cost me more than it would to just buy the finished product.

There’s that synergy working. Normally it would be a good thing, but here’s how it’s a bad deal for me …

I have a diminishing deductible on my insurance. So if they fix my car, for whatever price, I don’t pay anything and I get my car back intact like it was before the accident – like the deer incident never happened.

Instead, however, because all those parts cost more than the whole car is worth, the insurance company will probably give me some money for the car and I will have to add to that total in order to get a replacement for my vehicle.

In the end it will cost me money out of my pocket to get a car on the road again.

And because I don’t want to go back to a 2009 vehicle in 2016, I will have to purchase something that is newer and more expensive.

This “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” works out great for the insurance company.

Somehow I have to figure out how to get some synergy working for me.

Here’s the thing: God never intended us to live the Christian life on our own. We were created to live as Christ followers in community. So when you think of your life in Christ, consider all the parts: personal time with God, worship, learning, growing, and serving. It’s when we do these together that we experience the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What parts to your Christian life are you lacking right now? Leave your comments below.

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King of the Hill

It’s not often that I gawk at an accident. In fact, I purposely try not to slow down too much when I pass one, because it bugs me when people hold up traffic trying to rubber neck and get a good peak at the wreckage.

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But the other day, I was cruising through a parking lot and came across an interesting sight. I chuckled to myself when I saw it, but per my conviction, I kept driving past. Then  I thought, “This is too good to pass up!” so I turned around and parked the car.

This blue SUV was hung up on a mountain of snow. I was already laughing when I got out of the car and started to walk over with my iPhone. I had no intention of calling for help; I wanted a picture!  Do you know how hard it is to get a good picture when you’re laughing?

As I was getting the vehicle in my cross hairs, the woman who was driving the SUV saw me and blurted out, “Oh no! You’re not going to put this on YouTube, are you?” She was embarrassed, which just made me laugh harder, and for a moment I thought I should be taking video rather than still shots.

I circled the site and I wondered how in the world she could have gotten her car on that pile of snow. There was no snow around in any direction. It was the only snow mountain in the parking lot and she found it!  Maybe she wanted to conquer it … which she sort of did.

When I was a kid we used to play “king of the hill” on the huge snow pile the snowplow pushed into the middle of our cul-de-sac. It was always the big guys that could stay up on top the longest. This vehicle was on top and it was staying there, so I guess she won.

I think if she had have called a dealership they may have given her some money for leaving the car there. It looked like it was on one of those fake bolder structures you see at car dealerships. It would create some attention.

After taking 3 or 4 pictures, I had to know how or why she did this. She told me she turned her head to look at a parking spot and drove right up the mountain. But why not stop when you feel the resistance? Or better yet, when you turn down the row, look what’s ahead before looking for a parking spot!

My theory – and it’s only a theory – is that when she hit the snow, she thought, “I can get over this”, and stepped on the gas. It was, after all, a SUV: Sports Utility Vehicle. Don’t they make them for rough and rugged terrain, and … for climbing up snow mountains?

When I left the scene, the tow truck was on its way. About 20 minutes later, I drove by that parking lot again and noticed the snow was still there, but the vehicle was gone, and that woman was no longer king of the hill.

Here’s the thing: There are obstacles we have to deal with in life only because we didn’t pay attention to God warning us to stop, or go around them. If we learn to listen to and heed His guidance, we can avoid some of the mountains we face.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question:  What obstacles have you avoided because you paid attention? Leave your comment below.