As advertised, it needed a new battery. The nuts and bolts affixing the cables to it were fused with rust. The seller had cut the cables and wired in a small battery sufficient to start the motor to prove that it ran. I purchased a new battery and the necessary cable lugs, but finding the proper nuts and bolts was, surprisingly, a challenge. An auto parts store clerk informed me that they are only sold with the battery. “My battery didn’t come with any,” I told him. He replied, “That’s because you didn’t buy it from us.” After two hours wasted in a futile search, I called a marine mechanic friend and learned that I could get what I needed at that place with the helpful hardware folks.
The battery installed, the fuel tank topped, I climbed aboard my new-to-me mower and fired it up. It ran like a champ. I adjusted the deck height from its highest mowing setting down to the middle setting, engaged the blades and with the first pass scored my lawn down to the dirt. Horrified, I raised the deck back up to the highest setting and still all but scalped my lawn. Clearly, I need to go online and learn how to adjust the deck.
Even though my lawn is the same and I have cut it many times, I find that I must now approach the task differently. The same can be said of the Christian life. When a person puts their trust in Christ Jesus, the Scriptures describe him as having been born again. If by being born again we instantly became an infant once again, the notion of having to live our lives differently would be readily apparent. But the change is not physical. Your body does not change. Your environment does not change. You still go to work or to school, or wherever your daily life used to take you. Nonetheless, you are changed, are being changed, and more change is sure to come.
When someone is converted, the Spirit of God comes to reside in him illuminating his mind to the truth and authority of the Bible, the Word of God. Using the Word of God, the Spirit begins to change that person’s thinking to make it more like Christ’s. And, whereas so much around the newly converted person does not change, his perspective on these things is subject to change as he sees them afresh through the lens of Christ.
My lawn looks ragged now, but it will grow. I know that I, too, will grow in Christ for he is faithful.
