I owned a vehicle once named Herbie. He was a little, faded, orange excuse-for-a-car with a ripped black vinyl top. I don’t even know if the manufacturer would admit to creating him. Rust holes here and there gave him character, I thought at the time. I had to kick the door each time I wanted to enter the driver’s side. His trunk would fly open at the most inopportune times, like rush hour. His battered dash was concealed a bit with my 8-yr.old daughter’s stickers – quite festive actually. She used to pat him affectionately when the heater wouldn’t quite cut the bone-numbing cold of a Wisconsin winter. But I loved him.
It wasn’t his exterior that mattered. He was reliable (most of the time) and conscientious (for a car) and did the best his over-100,000-mile engine could do. I look a little like Herbie did. The roads I’ve traveled are etched on my face. There is some pain there but lots of joy, too. Life happens and in later years, life is often times evident on our exteriors.
But God loves us anyway. He sees the creature he created. He sees our inner workings, our heart and our soul. He pats us affectionately when we create our own scars. Maybe there’s even a little kick on our doors sometimes when we neglect to let him in. He sees the child he created in the womb, full of sin, yes. But that’s why he died – to clean us up, to give us that “new car smell” again, washed whiter than snow in his eyes.
So often we judge people by their exteriors. How very wrong that is! I’ve done it myself and I’m ashamed. Who can see into a heart but our Lord and Maker? Who knows the roads another person has traversed but God? Who knows the cause of every little dent and rip but Jesus? He knows every tear that has fallen. He sees and applauds our life progress. He orchestrates our joy.
I have some dents in my fenders and some rips in my jeans, as a contemporary Christian song states. So did Herbie. But he kept goin’ on. And his flaws became invisible because I knew his heart. God loves us inside and out. And he looks beyond our Etch-A-Sketch faces and sees only the beauty of his creation – in each and every one of us.
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them . . . God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” Genesis 1:27, 31
