Learning to Ride a Bike

When the straight-haired girl learned to ride her bike, she "helped" her daddy take off the training wheels as soon as she could talk him into doing it. After two years of tipping from side to side as she went down the sidewalk, I had noticed that the straight-haired girl was barely leaning at all. Sure enough, in ten minutes she had it mastered and has never looked back. The curly-headed girl was insanely jealous and immediately declared her intention of never riding her own bike again. EVER.

In his book, Grace and Truth, Randy Alcorn says the following:

"People had only to look at Jesus to see what God is like. People today should only have to look at us to see what Jesus is like. For better or worse, they’ll draw conclusions about Christ from what they see in us…Birds need two wings to fly. With only one wing they’re grounded. The gospel flies with the wings of grace and truth. Not one, but both…Truth without grace breeds a self-righteous legalism that poisons the church and pushes the world away from Christ. Grace without truth breeds moral indifference and keeps people from seeing their need for Christ."

Those statements are a bit frightening in light of the fact that, statistically, there is very little difference between we who call ourselves Christians and the rest of the world. Because of our different world view, shouldn’t it be glaringly obvious that we ourselves are positively different from the world outside our window?

Apparently, over the winter the curly-headed girl changed her mind. Last weekend, she and her dad went to the bike shop. She was beside herself to get her training wheels put on her bike so she could learn to ride it. I was a bit surprised when they returned to see the bike was not only without training wheels, but without pedals as well. She is learning to keep her balance, though. It’s impossible to ride without it.