After work this afternoon, I was scheduled to attend a little informal get-together with the members of the recently-reorganized Sunday School class I am now teaching. I got through work earlier than I expected, and so I stopped at Wal-Mart on the way to Drew and Tanya Lane’s house’ (they live in a subdivision just north of Shelbyville). Somewhere between Wal-Mart and the Lane’s house, I began to hear a flapping noise from within my engine. I pulled over and came to a stop, but the noise continued.

I somehow made it to the Lanes’, where Drew and I discovered that my serpentine belt had disintegrated. The grooves in the original belt separated it into three segments; only one of these segments remained, looking very much like a rubber band.

Drew drove me back into Shelbyville to buy a new belt from AutoZone. When we returned, we ate and socialized for a while and then went to look at the car. I’m not experienced with cars, so when I say “we” I primarily mean that I tried to hold the shop light in the right place.

There was no tensioner in my little Geo Metro’s engine; the tension on the belt was controlled by the position of the alternator. Drew loosened one of the bolts holding the alternator, but the bolt on which the alternator pivoted was nearly impossible to get to and was “bulldog tight,” as Drew put it. We were about to give up when one of the other members of the class, my dentist Jay Davis, came out. Jay figured out how to get some leverage on the alternator and slid it enough so that he and Drew could stretch the new belt around the wheels.

I felt really guilty at standing there for what must have been an hour while Drew worked on my pitiful little car. Every time I get in the Metro, I feel bad about what a poor steward I have been of the financial resources I’ve been given over the years. God has given me so much and sometimes it seems like I have nothing to show for it.