The last several months have not been kind to my vehicles. First, I was rear-ended right outside my house, totaling my car. After the other driver’s insurance quit paying for a rental car, I needed another vehicle to get to work. A good friend let me know that his spare car was available, so I borrowed it and started driving it to work.

We tried to find another vehicle to replace my totaled car, but a June packed with work and travel prevented us from finding one. Then the brakes on our remaining vehicle began shuddering so hard that I was afraid that something would tear loose at an inconvenient moment, such as when hurtling down a twisty mountain road. I asked the same friend whether he could help me out on short notice. He gladly obliged by replacing my brake pads and rotors in his shop. I offered to pay him for his trouble, but he refused to accept anything.

Our van now had smooth braking, which conveyed us safely up and over the West Virginia and Maryland mountains to Ohio. But only a few days after we returned, I received a frantic call from my wife that our van was dead in the Costco parking lot. I was able to revive it and limp it home, but it seemed likely that the alternator had finally coughed out its last watt. Now our one car was in a junkyard and the other was veering in that direction.

I told my friend that the alternator had died in our van, and wondered if he would be willing to help me replace it later that week. He said that he would be glad to help, even as early as that same evening, if I could get the part. I went to the closest auto parts store, but was unable to find one in stock. No nearby stores had it either, so I would have to wait for a day or so until I could get one.

That same evening, I packed my family into the borrowed car so we could help host a picnic nearby. After coming home after dark and cleaning up our sweaty and dirty boys, my wife and I collapsed into bed.

The next morning, as I was stumbling around half asleep trying to get coffee made, I noticed that the hood on the van was closed. The previous evening it had been open while we trickled charged the dead battery. I popped the hood and quickly realized that while we were sleeping a good samaritan had replaced our alternator.

As I drove to work later that morning, I realized there was no way I could repay his kindness. Over the past month he had lent us his car, replaced our brakes, and now had fixed our car mere hours after it had broken down. Even if I was a sorcerer with a socket set, that was of no use to him. I doubt he needed some sentences edited or some facts compiled, so there went some of the few things I could offer. Recognizing my inability to repay him was both humbling and painful to my ego.

It was then that I understood the extent to which I was unable to repay my friend’s kindness was nothing compared to what I owed God. I am often selfish, jealous, proud, and lazy. Yet, God still loves me and the rest of broken humanity so much that he sacrificed his son to redeem us. Money could help to reimburse my friend for his kindness of loaning us his vehicle and repairing our van, but money is of no use to cover my sin or repay God.

There is no way to repay God for His love toward us. But we can still show God how grateful we are by showing others the same love and forgiveness He has shown to us. How much would the world be changed if all those who had no way to repay God would love others with the same sacrificial love he has shown us?

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  (1 John 4:7-11 ESV)