The View (2/4/09) 

     Went to church Sunday and it wasn’t that bad.   People praying and singing and babies crying and cell phones going off, it was life as we know it.   Or at least a part of this life we think we know.   I think there’s a lot more we don’t know than we do.   So much of life comes at us on the surface.   The baby needs a diaper change, Aunt Myrtle would like a visit, the faucet is leaking and the girls have just walked in with a stray dog they found in the park.     Life.   Bills, jobs, family, friends, conflict and consideration, shopping and cooking and cleaning; you know, life.    But inevitably, questions arise such as, “Is this all there is to it?   What does it mean?   Do we just make our way in the world for seventy or eighty years and then say, ‘well, that’s all for now.    Hope to see you later, but who knows?’”   Life is in the living, they say, so what’s in the dying?  

     The life of Sunday morning turned to death that afternoon, and I don’t mean the demise of the Arizona Cardinals in the Super Bowl.   Got word that a friend of mine had died and it made me wonder about life, or more specifically, his life, now that he wasn’t living it anymore.    Was there something more to   his life than what we saw in his living?    And why does someone have to die before we look deeper at the significance of their living?    The answer to   that first question might serve as inspiration for solving the second.   Recognizing the deeper dimensions of my friend’s   life might help us with the significance of our own living, and dying, and praise God, living anew.   To that end, here’s some of what I saw, offered with the prayer that we too might see one another and even ourselves, with a deeper insight into the mystery of our lives as they are wrapped up in God’s living presence.  

Gary Goll

     What, O Lord, would you teach us from Gary’s life and death?     

     But first, thank You for Gary.   The gift of Gary.   And specifically the gift of Gary in the setting of   “Goll’s Garage.”   What a great title for a movie.   And Lord knows, that garage houses   plenty of material for a movie and about as many sequels as Rocky spawned.    I think of the many and varied characters that have come through that place; and of course, all the people that he has helped.   Folks come to him because he tells them the   truth; the truth about the condition of their automobiles, the truth about how they got shafted by the last bozo who pretended to repair them, the truth about his faith and also about his struggles.   Folks knew where they stood with Gary, and they’d quickly find out where Gary stood on any number of topics and issues, most wholly unrelated to the working or not working of their car.  

     Going out to pick up a repaired car was no mere errand, it was an event.    I’d pull up and park in the nearest crevice that cut through where a parking lot might ought to be, and walk into the metal building and toward the office.   Once he saw me coming, the sea of mechanics and onlookers and gawkers and shop hounds would part and Gary would stride through on grease stained concrete to the other side of the garage where all the worn out, used up and useless parts he found in this weeks foray into my engine would be laid out like so many dead Egyptians on the sand.   Each of these would be addressed in turn, and a thorough explanation given for why they were indeed, junk.   And it all served as evidence of his prowess in discovering what was really wrong under the hood.   But then from the car, he’d turn to me, to find out how I was doing, how I was running, what junk needed removing and what repairs needed to be made so that I might run smoother and last longer and actually be a bit safer to both myself and those around me.   And then I’d be shown evidence of God’s handiwork in Gary’s life.   That great Mechanic of the Soul had been removing some worn out, used up junk and replacing it with the new and improved equipment of Scripture and prayer and people who cared and the love of a devoted wife and on and on the list went.   Like those unrecognizable rusted wrecks plopped about his garage that would eventually become splendid and powerful muscle cars, Gary too was being restored, renewed, and revived into the splendid soul God had in mind, and powered by the Spirit.    Well, I learned soon enough that when it was time to go pick up a car from Gary, I should cancel all afternoon appointments and evening meetings.   Errands can be run and done, but events have no set time for ending.   (When I’d tell my wife I was heading out to pick up a car at Gary’s she’d no longer look at her watch and say, “what time you think you’ll be back?”   She walk over the calendar on the fridge and ask me what day I might return.)

     Prayer became an ever increasing part of Gary’s life.   How often do you take your car to get fixed and get both the car and all who are going to be driving in it and yourself as well prayed for before you leave?   Though Gary worked with   physical nuts and bolts, he could not keep himself from working with the nuts and bolts of spiritual life as well.   For both, physical and spiritual, it was nuts and bolts.   Nothing too complicated.   “It’s simple, so simple,” he’d say,   “t’s jut not that easy.”   And that’s why he’d pray.   He knew from experience how difficult the simple really is.   And he knew we all needed help, specifically God’s help, to live it.  

     And no one was too unimportant.   To Gary, losers were leaven in the bread of life.   The high and mighty just hadn’t fallen far enough yet, and it wasn’t up to Gary to push them off the cliff either.   But the ones   already down at the bottom, splattered all over the rocks, these were Gary’s cup of tea.   Loving the losers through the losing and helping them begin that crawl up the other side, that was Gary’s particular gift.   And we are all losers.   For some, it’s just a little more obvious and they recognize it sooner.   We all need the help of a Gary, somene who’ll gather us up, and sit us down and say that it’s all OK; that God’s going to make something of the mess we’ve made and it’s time we just let Him.   If Gary ever started a church, it’d be named, “Losers ‘R Us.”  

     “Fleet rate.”   That’s what Gary said he’d give me, since I had one car or another out there most all the time.   When the kids were home from college, he’d be ever so kind as to work us in so their cars would be roadworthy for their trips back and good through the next semester.   He did good work, and he stood by it.   

     And he stood by me too.   During some particularly tough times with the church, I found the counseling center at “Goll’s Garage” always open.   I could bitch and moan, rant and rave; it all stayed right there.   A listening ear, gentle encouragement, a safe haven amidst grease and fenders, rusted ancient vehicles looking like they were salvage yard rejects, in a tiny air conditioned office which only a couple of sticks of dynamite could improve.  

     “Ah man, you are outta control....” he told me several times for several different, though not unwarranted reasons.   The phrase he uttered has stuck with me for many years.   He was right then, and now too.   Let’s face it,   none of us are in control, really.   We just operate under the illusion of control, which deludes us to thinking we can and should control others too; a most dangerous delusion.    Gary couldn’t control himself either,   but he did know Who was in control.   Kristi.   He loved his wife immensely, though love was not something he was particularly good at expressing.   Still, on every trip out to Goll’s Garage, I’d hear some complimentary remark, some expression of the undeserved marital blessing he’d received in her, some monologue on how much his angelic wife had to put up with, and always he wondered how he could ever express his gratitude and love for her.  

     And I’d get the full scoop on his boys.   There were times when his pride shined like headlights on high beam; and other times of hand wringing, fatherly worry, when he was so perplexed he wondered what he should pray for each of them.   But I always heard about   them.   Which means his boys were always on his mind, always in his thoughts, always his deep concern.  

     “Outta control, but in the Lord.”   That phrase might describe many of us, but best described Gary.   No, Gary was the incarnation of that phrase.   Gary struggled with his faith like Jacob wrestling with God, and I imagine God struggled mightily with Gary.   Gary argued with God like Job, but never quit trusting God through feast and famine.  They really both stuck with each other,   God with Gary and Gary with God.   In these latter months Gary’s’ faith seemed to have grown exponentially.   The gift of his contemplative, “spiritual chair” to which he could go any time and where he would joyfully reside in the presence of his Lord became Gary’s spiritual center,   his abiding place; and contemplatively sitting there gave Gary the peace he’d always struggled to attain.   His prayer life deepened, his arms reached wide to folks struggling with various demons as he had so struggled too.   Deep and wide.   In the Lord Gary was growing deep and wide.  

     And I believe he continues that growth today.   For Gary is this day, alive “in the Lord.”   Maybe the fiery chariot that swooped up Elijah needs some work, maybe the four horsemen of the apocalypse have been aching to hang up their spurs, and get behind the wheel of a souped up GTO.   Since the Lord seems bent on restoration, I’m sure Gary’s skills and passions will be useful for the cause.   

     He’d walk out of his office ushering me to whichever car I’d most recently had repaired and with an arm sweeping through the air indicating the entirety of the garage, he’d declare, “It’s all junk.   That’s all it is, junk.”  

     But not you, Gary.   God don’t make no junk.   You are a precious stone, gleaming and shining bright, a living stone built into the house of God.   Amen.