A few days ago, Pat and I climbed into Tonka 02 and pointed her nose north on I-75. We were on a very important mission. We were going to see our newest grandbaby for the very first time! She was flying into Atlanta (yep, her arms did get tired!) for her other grandfather’s birthday celebration. Milena did have the good sense to bring her parents along with her.

Our plan was to cover as much highway as we could in the shortest amount of time possible. We drove 602 miles to the home of our daughter, Kathleen. She is such a gracious hostess. After a good night’s sleep, Pat, Kathleen and I drove about an hour south to meet the new addition. We eagerly scanned the approach to the motel for our first glimpse. In an effort to forestall the flow of more pictures, I’m not going to say again that she is the most beautiful baby in the world. However, she certainly is in the top two or three!

Holding her for the very first time was quite a thrilling experience. She was exactly three months old that day. If you’ve read my previous stuff, you already know she had the fine sense of timing to be born on my birthday! She has my blue eyes. She has my widow’s peak. She seemed to love being held and didn’t even spit up much.

Now I’m going to focus on the trip up I-75. My truck knows every single exit, every crack in the highway, every rest area, every place to buy the least expensive gas. It’s pretty much a dull, boring haul when I make that journey. I just try to endure it.

As we got close to Atlanta, I noticed that we were entering a shower. No, not a meteor shower, not a rain shower, but a shower of pieces of paper, dirt, and dust. As we pulled closer to the source of this pollution, I noticed an enormous garbage truck steaming up the highway. All this stuff was pouring out of the top of the truck. My guess is that by the time they got to the landfill, their trip was pretty much a waste of time.

What really made me want to roll on the floor and laugh out loud (pretty difficult to do while driving 70 mph, BTW) was the logo on the side of the truck. It said: “We’re Working Hard To Keep Georgia Clean”. It identified the city. I’m leaving that out so that I will be able to safely negotiate that stretch of road in the near future.

I told Pat that there just had to be the raw material for an “Inside Out” piece in this event. It occurred to me that what was coming out of the top of the truck just didn’t match the logo on the side of the truck. Isn’t that a nearly perfect definition of hypocrisy, eh?

I’ve dealt with this subject before. Do you remember reading about the elderly grandmother who boldly cut me off in traffic and then, when I beeped my horn, gave me a very offensive hand gesture? Did you read “What Would Jesus Do?” There are so many ways to practice hypocrisy, but they all pretty much boil down to this statement: What’s coming out of our lives doesn’t match the claims we’ve painted on the side of our truck!

The Bible tells us that what a person is like inside will eventually be seen on the outside. We might fool folks for a while, but not forever. When Jesus lives inside us, then Jesus kinds of things ought to be coming out of us. We ought to practice what we preach. We ought to live up to the heritage we claim as a true child of God. Lots of “we oughts”, right?

How in the world do we keep the trash from coming out of our lives when we’re professing how hard we’re working to keep our lives clean? Let me make a few suggestions:

• Start by practicing brutal honesty.
• If we’ve been pretending to be something we’re not – we must stop!
• If we’ve been living a lie and know it – we must stop!
• If we’ve been living a double life and somehow didn’t realize it, when we learn the truth – we must change.
• Change isn’t a matter of will power. It’s a matter of yielding our will to His power!
• Only Jesus can change our lives permanently.
• Only Jesus can bring what we profess into line with what we possess.

(The next few pieces up here at “Inside Out” will be from our rather extensive collection of archival stuff. Some of this material may actually be worth a second reading. You be the judge. Would still appreciate your feedback. Just won’t get back to you until I get home.)

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