Beauty on the Outside

   A quarter century had gone by – with five years in college and two in the Army - I’d had only had six months of full-time employment. Now back home, my newspaper gig resumed, it was time to start living.

   Months later Sports Illustrated hooked me with a full-page ad for a Triumph Spitfire. Not a classic Triumph, but it was a spiffy convertible, two seater, and I had to have it. A dealer sold me a bright red one for $2,500. 

                                                                        Growing Up #4   

   A couple years later, Don, an Army buddy then at a TV station in Toledo, ask me to consider working for him. Drafted like me, he was unenthused in our Army office, but he was a perfectionist in his career and knew my work ethic. I knew nothing about TV promotion. I had just spent a month producing an “industrial edition” on top of my regular six newspaper editions per week. I was exhausted, rewarded with a check for all of $100. Boo hoo.

   With tears in his eyes Dad handed me my baseball glove – “Don’t forget this” – and the bright red toy and I headed west. 

   It took 45 minutes to drive six city miles from apartment to work. One morning about halfway there, something wasn’t working. I drifted into a gas station. The fly wheel was shot, red paint or not.

   A year or so later, the engine wasn’t performing well under the hood. There were four cylinders. I could file the valves into compliance. Not! Humbled, I had just enough power to drive it to a repair shop.

   We have our best faces, all smiles, but unless there is true love and integrity “under the skin” something isn’t working well. More than outward spirituality, the (red) heart steers us along the path God has in mind for us.  

1 Samuel 16:7 – Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.