CMA Notes
I don’t know about you, but I find it easier to pretend that it’s spring when I know there are swap meets going on. Yes, I’m denying reality a bit, but standing in line in the slush to get into a swap meet is kind of like seeing the first robin of the season pecking around for seeds in the snow – we both may be jumping the gun, but spring is definitely just around the corner!
I dare say I’m a typical female in that I’m at a swap meet to see friends, have a little food, and poke through the clothes vendors – not so much to look at the bike parts. Every now and again something will catch my eye, but most of the time the tangle of cables, steel, and rust on display are a mystery to me. Mark, on the other hand, will swoop on one of these bits with an enthusiastic “Ah!”. He’ll look at it from all sides, trying to determine if it’s exactly what he wants. (I used to foolishly ask him what these parts were for, but since he may as well be answering me in Chinese, I don’t bother any more.) Even more of a puzzle to me at my first swap meet was this question: How are the original bikes running if they’re missing all these parts? I finally realized that a swap meet is basically a mobile junk yard of formerly awesome bikes that somehow met their end and are now being parted out. Every once in a while I’ll see something shiny in a box and know that either someone purchased an un-returnable part that didn’t work out and they’re trying to recoup their loss by selling it, or that it’s a stock part that was stripped off a new bike and immediately replaced by something custom. Because no one would strip down their favorite bike that ran well and part it out, right? Imagine your sense of amazement if even a friend swapped parts off his custom one-of-a-kind bike to get your clunker bike up and running just so the two of you could ride together. Actually, though, God did just that for us. When Adam and Eve first sinned, they signed a debt agreement on the dotted line on behalf of all their descendants. Due to their choices the entire human race is being held captive until the debt for that sin is paid. The irony of the situation is that as individuals we don’t HAVE to stay in captivity because God did the unthinkable for us: He sent his only son, Jesus Christ, to trade places with us so we could be freed. Jesus’ perfection was parted out to keep clunkers like us alive. Romans 5:8 says it this way: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Our freedom doesn’t depend on us being good enough, because that will never happen. Rather, it depends on us understanding that we can never be good enough and accepting Jesus as the payment for our debt. Stuart Townsend wrote these words: How deep the Father’s love for us, How vast beyond all measure That He should give His only Son, To make a wretch His treasure. What God wants from us is our acknowledgement that we can never pay the debt for our own sin and for us to accept the “swap” He arranged for us – the life of Jesus Christ. He’s everything we’ll ever need. Blessings - Karla Mark and Karla Cornick are Area Reps for the Christian Motorcyclists Association. To learn more about CMA and God’s plan for your life, visit www.cmausa.org . 8 - TRMI MARCH 2015
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