The short version is my Jeep is currently in the dealer right now for the forth time since late July. The dealer I purchased it from - which shall remain nameless yet is the only Chrysler dealer in my Texas hometown - simply tried to sell me a new car rather than repair this one which is barely two years in my care. I also will not be purchasing another product from Chrysler - not because the Jeep failed on me, but because of their customer service and lack of interest at every level in doing anything about it. In short - an inferior product with horrible inner-company communication and impersonally indifferent customer service is exactly why that company had to use your tax dollars to keep from going out of business. Truth is, they deserved to go out of business. And that's all I have to say about that.
*not my actual Jeep, but it's how I felt
and I am upside down in it.
The lack of a vehicle has kept me from being able to stay in my rented room out at the Brotel. It's so far out and no one out there has the same schedule as me. So I have been crashing on my cousin's sofa, which I perceive as a huge inconvenience to their family. Even if they say it's not.
Frustrations upon frustrations when I discovered that AT&T (the company who probably trained Chrysler in inner-company communications and customer service) had over-charged me $400 on my bill this month, after having cut the bill down last month from another set of $400 over-charges. If this happens again I will quit AT&T and go to Sprint now that (as of about ten hours from the moment of this writing) they will start selling the iPhone. After an hour on the phone with their customer service I got that straightened out.
Another couple of calls to the dealership, then Jeep, then my mother - who God used to test my patience and humility* - and all I wanted to do was get out of the house. It was raining.
It rains in San Diego apparently. Two or three times a year maybe? Everyone here starts waving their arms around and screaming The sky is falling!!! Wimps. I don't want to get soft like these San Diegans - subject to such good weather most of the time that when something does fall out of the sky they panic. I crave a big Texas thunderstorm.
Steve Jobs died. Not that I knew him personally, but immediately I was struck with his mortality and that for all the accomplishments and brilliance we praise Jobs for on earth, what has it gained him where he is now? This was a bummer - an eternal bummer.
Last night I reached maximum grump for a few additional reasons that I wont go into here because, well, it isn't any of your business. But I did not react as well as I could have. God was working on me.
Then I get a text message from one of my Impact195 "family" members, Richard. He tells me that one of our sisters in our family group is having a bad night, and my first reaction was Me too. Wow - how selfish of me.
In our Servant Leadership class recently we have been addressing both pride and humility. Pride is the block between us and God. Humility is the opposite - the conduit to being able to interpret His Word as His Will for our lives, listen for His voice and grow close to Him.
Philippians 2: 5-8
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: [6] Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; [7] rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. [8] And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death - even death on a cross! [NIV]
Jesus - in His humility became a human being - station very very very very very far beneath God, the perfect and permanent Creator of All Things. He actually became the created. Not just in flesh, but in status. Jesus departed from Heaven for this pitiful earth. Jesus was equal with God and could have done anything He wanted, but He didn't. Instead, he submitted Himself to humanity as a servant, and as a sacrifice. He died to carry sin. My sin. Your sin.
He was the most absolutely perfect human being yet He - because of humility (the absence of pride) - took on our sins, and the sins of every single murderer, rapist, child-molester, thief, liar, and politician. Your sins and their sins and my sins, all combined together and put on the only absolutely perfect, divine human being ever.
Be humble. Jesus was.
I killed Him. So did those murderers, rapists, child-molesters, thieves, liars and you.
And if you think you're any different than them, that's pride - the inhibitor that keeps us from God.
*I failed
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