The Bicycle

This is something Bruce wrote last night after our church's homegroup meeting. He was kind enough to let me share it..... I think its so beautiful, and so true.


The Bicycle

There was a small village, in a distant and remote part of the world. This village consisted primarily of simple village folk, most of them honest, but poor. Living in that village was a young man. He lived in a run down dwelling with his mother and younger brothers and sisters. Every day he would ride his bicycle to the local town, where he would do whatever manual work he could find for a little pay, so he could buy some modest amount of supplies to take back to his family that evening. He was not especially clever, but he didn't mind. He was honest, and a good worker, and he loved his family dearly. His clothes were not expensive, but his mother kept them clean and presentable. His bicycle was old and worn, but it was necessary for him to take the long journey into town every day.

One day, as he was about to leave, he noticed he had a flat tyre. He had heard of a man in town, who owned the bicycle shop, and decided that he needed to visit him to get his tyre fixed. That day, before work, he went to the shop to see how much the new tyre would cost. He couldn't afford to get it fixed at the shop, but perhaps he could buy the tyre and the man would tell him how to fix it himself. The shop owner could see the young man was not wealthy, and agreed. After working in town that day, the young man went back to the bicycle shop, and bought the tyre. He realised that he did not have as much money left to buy food for his family afterwards, but reasoned that he needed his bicycle to get to and from his home, and to get work at all. He tried to repair the tyre himself, and it worked, in a fashion, although he noticed a few days later that it kept going flat, and he needed to keep pumping it up. And so he did exactly that. Every day he would ride a few miles, stop to pump up the tyre, and then carry on. It took a little longer to get to the town, and that left him with less time he could work before he had to begin his journey home, but he reasoned that he could not afford to have the bicycle shop owner fix the tyre properly, so this would have to do.

The roads he had to travel every day were rocky and rough, and a few days later, the young man noticed the other tyre on the bicycle was also in need of replacement. Again, he decided he could not afford to have the man at the shop fix it properly, especially now that he was not earning quite as much money as he used to, and so he would again buy the tyre and try to fix it himself. This time something went wrong when he was fitting the tyre, and the wheel on the bicycle wound up a little bent. This made the journey into town slower again, as he struggled with the handlebars that kept pulling one way, and then the other. And of course, every few miles he had to stop to pump up the other tyre.

Soon, with all the wobbling of the bent wheel, the handlebars became loose. The young man was becoming frustrated with the ride into town every day, but he knew that he must do it if he was to earn any money. He needed the bicycle. He had no idea how to fix the handlebars, but again went to visit the shop owner to ask for instruction on how he might try. The shop owner suggested that the young man might want to leave his bicycle at the shop, but the young man felt it would cost him more than he could afford, and besides, he could not be without the bicycle as he needed it for the long journey into town every day.

Well, with the roughness of the roads, and poor condition of the bicycle, other things started to wear out or break. The condition of the bicycle became so bad, that when the young man went to the shop owner to ask for instruction on how to fix it, the shop owner would just shake his head, and say, "Please, leave it here."

"No," the young man would argue."I need this bicycle to ride every day, or how can I do what I must do?" Soon the condition of the bicycle was so bad, that the young man was too embarrassed to even go by the bicycle shop. He knew the shop owner had helped him so much, and he had no money to repay his kindness, so he would just carry on as best as he could.

One day, the chain on the bicycle broke, and with it, the heart of the young man. He knew that the bicycle was not in any state to be fixed any more, and without it, the journey into town would take so long, that he would not be able to work enough to support his family. The young man sat down in the dust, and wept. He decided he would go to the shop owner, and plead with him to help him fix it. When he arrived at the bicycle shop, the owner shook his head, and said again, "Please, leave it with me." The young man thought, "I have no money to pay this man, and I feel like I already owe him so much. I will give him the bicycle. Perhaps he can use it for parts, or for scrap. I will not be able to support my family, and we shall all perish."

It took him hours to walk home that evening, and he arrived tired, thirsty, hungry, and exhausted.

The next morning, the shop owner was waiting outside the young man's dwelling. The young man sheepishly walked up to the the shop owner. "Have you come to tell me how to fix my bicycle now?", he asked. "No son," the shop owner replied, smiling. "It's not yours any more. The truth is that I never wanted to tell you how to fix it. I wanted to give you this for it, instead."

There, standing a few metres away, was a brand new bicycle.

Our lives, and the things in our lives, are much like the young man's bicycle. We become so attached to them. We can't be without them. We need them. When things start to break and go wrong, we want to fix them ourselves. We're afraid of what God might ask of us to make things right. Sometimes, we ask him to help us fix it, and we ask, and we ask, and we feel like we're doing the right thing. And sometimes we're successful in making small improvements that we feel we can live with. Meanwhile, other things keep breaking and going wrong with our lives. And so the cycle continues. But when we finally decide to dump our broken and incomplete lives at his feet, we find what he wanted to do all along, was to give us a brand new life instead. A life he has crafted, especially for us.

B.C.
07/05/08