You may or may not know what this doo hickee is that is attached to my IPod which was, at the moment of this picture, playing a selection from my Norman Riddle Christmas album. It is an FM Transmitter that supposedly allows you to turn its receiver to a station from 88.1 to 88.9 on your car stereo and you can plug in your IPod or CD player or whatever and play it through your car stereo system.
I bought this doo hickee about four years ago, after trying two other doo hickees that were supposed to do the same thing but did not. But hope springs eternal and so I tried this one. It didn't work either. So I resigned myself to listening to my IPod in my car with headphones sort of half way on my ears and half way off so I can hear what was going on around me.. Not a good way either to listen to an IPod or to hear what is going on around you. My 2005 Prius does not have a USB port like many newer cars do so that I can play the IPod that way. So I either have been doing the earphones-half-way-on thing or listening to CDs which limits me to musical selection. I will not bore you with how many songs I have on ITunes but on my Christmas Sacred playlist, there are 125 songs. (That does not include my Advent Sacred playlist or my Christmas Secular playlist)
I really wanted to listen to these songs through my car stereo which my not compete with Kendall Waller's, but was top of the line when I bought it. So, being a person in whom hope tends to spring eternal most of the time, I tried the doo hickee again this afternoon. For once I had the IPod with me when I also had not lost the doo hickee, and I had batteries in the doo hickee and I located one of those stations on the radio that did not have a much of a signal, and guess what!? IT WORKED...there was some static, and it plays at its best when I hold on to its teeny little antennae but it works!!! Better at night I found out this evening.
Wow, though, you have to get everything lined up just right.. and it's like the thingy is working only by a hair, you know what I mean? Tonight the IPod suddenly went off because the back of the thingy (I've gone to slang shorthand) fell off and a battery fell out...and a couple times, when I was trying to get the thingy attached to the IPod in the right place in the car to pick up the signal best, I turned it off and couldn't figure out what it wasn't working any more. And woe to me if I somehow hit the button accidentally on the steering wheel where you can change radio stations...all is again lost.
My life from time to time feels to me like it feels to get this thingy to work---having batteries that work and aren't turned upside down (you can read that as taking care of myself physically or use your own metaphored meaning), intentionally working at getting my spirit aligned with God's so the music can play; making sure that I don't get distracted and somehow in my wandering of mind accidentally wander onto another wavelength than where I cannot sing the Lord's song.
But, to be honest, as much as I thought this metaphor might work some, it doesn't as far as our relationship with God goes. Because getting the FM transmitter to work right is all on me. I am the one who bought the darn thing; I am the one who had to buy the batteries and make sure they were AAA not AA; I am the one whose gotta work the tuning of the radio and the transmitter; I am the one who makes sure my IPod is powered up; I am the one who should have made sure that the back was securely on so the batteries did not fall out.
But praise Jesus, friends, it is NOT all about me or you. We don't have to "make it work" with God and his son our Savior; yes, it is good to put ourselves in a receptive place spiritually, but it is through God's mighty love and his desire to cradle us and to remind us and to pick us up and carry us and to prod us out of our spiritual complacency. These things our God knew that we could not do for ourselves and so God gave us Christmas, the nativity of our Lord, doing for us that which we cannot do, loving us into salvation, and never letting us get so far away from him that he does not beckon us home. That to me is VERY good news!
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