Car Alarms - In a very groggy state at 2am I rolled out of my bed to an annoying repetitive honking. I figured it was a car alarm and as I looked out the window I was shocked to realize that is was my car. And even more shocking to me was the fact that my car had a car alarm. I didn’t know that my car was equipped with such a feature even though I have ad my car for two and a half years! Since I didn’t know what that my car this capability I had no idea how to disarm it or really what it meant, especial that early in the morning. So I leaned out my window and hit all the buttons on my key ring clicker. Whatever I hit worked and the sound stopped so that I could return to sleep. As I faded ever so quickly back into my euphoric dream sequence the thought came to me that alarms are usually associated with danger or bad things. When I awoke for work three hours later I remembered the episode with the alarm and tried to recall if it was a dream or real. When I looked out my window and saw my trunk open I knew almost immediately what had happened. I walked out into the dewy grass and around to the driver side of my car to find what had once been my window lying on the ground in a million pieces and what had once been my stereo system missing from the scene all together. My first reaction was not utter remorse and agony but of a mild humor that must have been cause by my lack of coffee to help me process the situation. So I called the cops, they hung out for a little bit, took some fingerprints and told me they’d call if my system ever showed up at a pawnshop. Yeah, uh-huh. I am not holding my breath for that. The thing that stuck out to me about the situation that may have been the turning point in the whole episode was not that my car got broken into or that my stereo got stolen, it was my unawareness to the fact that my car had a car alarm. If I had known that and then known what to do when the alarm went off I am confident that I would still have my stereo. I know that I do this a lot in life, I am used to the options that I have figured out and I am not reading the instruction manual to see what things I am equipped with to do more. In Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus his prayer for them is that they “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” What an assignment! We have the opportunity for the rest of our lives to attempt to understand the hugeness of God and we have the instruction manual to do it. There are so many things that I don’t, and never will, understand about God. That’s okay; I don’t have to know it all. As much as I want to always be learning I know that there is more to know about God than there are seconds in eternity. I am really glad that for those of us that know Christ as our Savior we have all of eternity to be learning all the cool things about God. But I know that sometimes I get very comfortable knowing what I know and taking a ‘spring break’ from learning about God. I check out and skip class, don’t read my notes or the text, go some place altogether different and don’t think about it. And that is when I forget about the ‘features’ of my faith and I get robbed. When I am not in tune with the Lord I forget about His promises and all the things that He offers. I forget that I have His unconditional love and that I have a purpose. Then when something is going wrong, I find myself thinking in a groggy state and letting my soul get robbed because I’d forgotten I had an alarm to warn me. “Be of sober spirit, be on alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8) We have so much at our fingertips if we know Christ. It is our job to be aware of the features of this life and the power of our God.