I believe it was in the summer of 2019 when Lucy, our ninth grandchild, brought one of our scooters to me for repair. While I was working on it, she said, “Pops, you’re a good fixer.” That just felt good all over. If I am an excellent fixer, it is because the kids are good breakers. I get a lot of practice fixing things.
If something breaks….no…when the grandkids render something unusable, the kids will cast it aside and move on to something else. Most often, when the kids are all here on the hill together, they will drop what they were playing with where they are and move on to the next amusement. It seems to be the norm for them to dismount their vehicle while still moving and let the simple machine continue until momentum is lost. Ten feet or so from where they decided to dismount is where the apparatus ends up on its side. There it will lie until another of the kids picks it up and goes on another bicycle round. Or, it will be picked up by an adult and moved, often in frustration, off the driveway to allow egress or digress.
Occasionally, a scooter is left in a discrete location and unnoticed by a driver who will back their car over the juvenile mobile transportation device. That’s when it’s brought to me for realignment and/or restoration. Other times, a child will push their bike into the shop to repair some mysterious malady that makes it inoperable. It’s interesting to me that no one knows when or how it got in that unusable condition.
On one occasion, I was sitting on the front porch of my shop when I noticed one of the kids having a hard time because the chain would not stay on the drive sprocket. Upon doing my diagnostic examination, I discovered that somehow the drive sprocket (the one with the peddles attached) had been bent. I know from my own experience that a bent sprocket is very difficult to flatten enough to keep the bike moving under power. The bent sprocket rendered the bike a piece of yard art or recycle metal.
When I was a kid, my older brother and I shared a beautiful red Schwinn bicycle with a headlight and horn built into the frame; and we sat comfortably on a spring-mounted seat covered in brown leather. It was awesome. At least until Louie built a ramp in an attempt to “catch some air.” The front wheel hit the ramp perfectly, but the rear wheel slipped off. I can still see Louie flying over the handlebars and the horror of the drive sprocket slamming into the cinderblock holding up the ramp. Our bike lost its cycle.
Humans come into this world with a bent drive sprocket. As we grow, the more independent we become the more we discover the effects of our bent sprocket. Not only so, but the folks around us also have bent sprockets and seem to collide with us or impede our progress. As infallible as it feels to us, our own reasoning is, in fact, our bent sprocket. We need a new one! Thankfully there are replacement parts at the “Bike Shop.”
To travel this life with power, we must allow God to replace our bent self-sufficient thinking with God dependency thinking. If you are going to work hard at getting along in life anyway, you might as well do life God’s way. At least then, we know the chain will not come off and we will experience sufficient power to make it to where we long to be. None of our efforts in life will be wasted; everything will be used by God to transport us to our Divine destination.
Photo – A barn on Long Hollow Parkway near Northview Drive.
Baldwin Heirlooms 