Mac Davis, who grew up in Lubbock, made popular a 1970’s hit, “Happiness Is Lubbock In Your Rearview Mirror.”  You write songs like that when happiness is something you’re still looking for on down the road, when you’re the one driven by the myth that happiness is someplace other than where you are at the moment.  The truth is, whether or not happiness is Lubbock, or anywhere, in your rearview mirror has a lot to do with what happened in Lubbock.  If you abandoned happiness there because of some unfinished business, then Mac’s song is literally true.  Happiness is in Lubbock, or Dallas, or Waco, or wherever you’ve been; it’s not where you are.  Sometimes you have to turn around and go back before you can go forward.  Those U-turns can be painfully difficult. 

Ask King David.  He’s moving on down the road to somewhere else when Nathan, a prophet sent by God, stops by one day and asks him to take a good look in his rearview mirror at some unfinished business.  This is going to turn out worse for David than if Morley Safer of 60 Minutes had shown up.  You can read all about it 2 Samuel 11-12.  Here’s the Reader’s Digest version.  David slept with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of the officers in his army, while Uriah was away fighting and David was playing it safe back in Jerusalem.  Bathsheba got pregnant.  In order to cover it up, David arranged to have Uriah killed by putting him on the front line of battle at a place called Rabbah.  Sure enough, Uriah is killed in action and, as far as David is concerned, happiness is Rabbah in his rearview mirror.  Until Nathan shows up. 

Nathan tells David a story about a rich man who takes advantage of a poor man.  The rich man has plenty of sheep.  But, when a guest comes to stay in his home, he takes the only lamb the poor man has, something like the family pet, and serves it to his guest for dinner.  When Nathan finishes telling David the story, David is so angry, he says, “‘As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die  (2 Samuel 12:5-6).’”  Of course, Nathan was just setting David up.  Once David condemned the rich man’s behavior, Nathan says to David, “‘You are the man (2 Samuel 12:7)!’”  Nathan’s story was just a parable, of course, meant to make David face his own sin.  He was saying to him, “Objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they appear.” 

David is broken-hearted.  It’s at this point that he begs God for forgiveness and we have his prayer of confession recorded in Psalm 51.  “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.  Wash me thoroughly . . . cleanse me from my sin.  For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me (Psalm 51:1-3).”  What David had hoped was forever in his rearview mirror was now, in his own words, “ever before me.”  But, David wasn’t just facing the adultery and murder in his past.  He was also looking back at the place where he had abandoned his faithfulness and the joy that came with it.  That’s why this king who had everything would pray, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.”  David had all the life he could control into being.  Now he was asking for a joy that could only be his if God gave it.

What is it that stands between us and joy?  If we’re like David then it is anyone or anything that stands between us and that to which we believe, for whatever reason, we’re entitled.  It’s our sense of entitlement (a very American way of viewing the world) that keeps us looking for happiness somewhere else on down the road.  And, the things we’ll do to claim our entitlement to happiness are truly frightening.  David wasn’t above lying, stealing, adultery or murder.  What do we think we’re above?  Whether it’s the injustice of another man who has the woman we want or a system that prevents us from having the life, the house, the job, the recognition, the power that we believe will make us happy.  It’s frightening what we’ll do to get that to claim our perceived entitlements.

King David was beginning to discover something we, too, are prone to forget.  That what we can control and manipulate to suit our wishes and whims never brings us the joy that only the risk of a faith relationship with God can bring.  Sometimes, God has to bring us face to face with all of our controlling and manipulating so that we are left with nothing more than the choice to trust him.

This past week I was having lunch with Dr. Larry Williams.  Larry, a member of our church, has been in private practice for years helping people face what’s in their rearview mirrors.  Once in a while, I find it’s very helpful just to “have lunch” with Larry.  This past week, over soup and salad, I found myself telling him about how disturbed I was about the three young people from Rockwall who were killed two weeks ago in a horrifying car wreck.  In less time than it will take me to finish this sentence, their car hydroplaned head-on into a pickup truck on a rural road and their three beautiful promising lives were just gone, forever. 

I knew one of the families only at a distance.  Cameron had played YMCA soccer with the younger brother of one of the boys who was killed and we had practiced in their backyard many evenings.  When Chris was killed it hit me hard.  I have not been able to get the family off my mind.  I’ve prayed and cried.  It hit real hard.  I told Larry it didn’t make sense.  Sure, I’m the father of two young boys and no parent of teenagers doesn’t age every time their kid leaves home, even for just a little while.  But, I’ve also done funerals for people of every age, even funerals for members of my own family that didn’t hit this hard.  I said to Larry, “I don’t know what it is about those people that made this death so hard.”  And, Nathan-like, Larry graciously said, “It’s not about them.  It’s about you.” 

I felt tears welling up from deep inside, about to salt my vegetable soup.  Tears of confession and relief all at once.  Here I am a pastor.  I’m the one who is supposed to help other people and I had been so blind to my own fears and pride and anxieties.  Most of all, the anxiety that always goes with believing that somehow or another we’re entitled to even one more day of life.  An anxiety that not only interrupts faith but also robs us of the joy that faith uniquely offers.  An anxiety that keeps us manipulating life according to our own will instead of God’s.  God used the death of those three young people to finally force me to take a look at some place back up the road where I’d traded in my joy for anxiety over the well being of my sons and even myself.

A confrontation, not yet finished, that has reminded me, quite painfully, that I can’t control anything.  I can’t protect my children.  I can’t guarantee their outcome.  I can’t control my wife, my life or my church.  At a minimum, what we can control can never make us happy or fill us with joy.  At best it can only distract us for a while.  Absolute control is an illusion of only the most arrogant people.  Joy is God’s gift to trusting people.  Like David, until we release ourselves into his mercy, it alludes us everywhere we go, in everything we do. 

These are David’s words, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right sprit within me.  Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.  Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain me with a willing spirit.”  Do you hear it?  Just releasing himself to the power and presence of God to give him a life he could never control into being.  A life exclusively reserved for those who discover the simple joy of relationship with God.  Not a self-empowered life just layered over with the pretense of trust, with externally memorized habits of worship and service that have no real personal meaning, but genuine, intimate relationship with the living God.  David said it this way to God, “You have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give you a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.  The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” 

Up until now, all David had been able to hear was the empty, metallic sound of the hammer blows of his automaton-like manipulative and destructive ways.  Now, he was praying for a music of the soul only the Holy Spirit could orchestrate.  He wanted to be close to God.  He wanted to feel the divine presence on a level that no human experience could create.  He was letting go. 

Our good friend Kenny Wood wrote of his frustration with happiness this way.  “Back in my grade school days when I took baths, I’d try to grab the soap in the tub and it would shoot out of my hand like a torpedo.  After months of grabbing, I finally decided to spread my hand out near the bottom and let the soap float down into it.  I had no idea happiness is slippery like soap.  Happiness comes when we’re not grabbing for it.  You can’t capture (happiness) corral, control, or calendar it.  Happiness is a gift (Kenny Wood, Chance Meetings, January, 2002).”

And, this is where all of this soapy water hits the wheel of our church’s life at this point.  We are now embarking on what could well be the most exciting journey any of us have ever taken in all of our lives.  For some, this is the most fun they’ve ever had in church, in the truest sense, the most joy.  This past week our Boethians, a men’s class started in 1918 by Dr. Bassett for World War One veterans, were out having coffee.  They’d heard about the shower we’re having for our nursery and preschool area and how gifts had been registered at various stores around town.  Rather spontaneously, they put down their coffee and all went to Toys R Us to go shopping.  I hear it was so much fun that they’ve considered renaming their class, Boethians R Us!  For some, this is becoming the most meaningful time they’ve ever known in church.

For others, it is a time of profound anxiety.  If you’re anxious, you’re in good company with your pastor.  I’ve told several people that, for a while, I’m going to have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.  This is something we can’t calendar, control or corral.  It’s just happening.  God is gifting us with new life.  Sometimes God has to confront us with what we fear most so that we will learn to trust him and not miss the gift.  If we will not miss this moment, some of us will have to go back to that place where we traded in the joy of trust for a life, even a church, we could control into being.  This will not be easy work. 

It wasn’t until David was confronted with his past and released himself to a loving God that he found new joy.  The apostle Paul wrote of having to release both his past and his future into God’s hands in order to embrace the life God wanted for him (Philippians 3).  It wasn’t until I was confronted with the fear of losing my life that the joy of the only life I have started to come back to me.  It won’t be until we release our fears of what might happen if we lose control that we will know the joy that only God can give when we trust our lives, past, present and future to his merciful control. 

Billy Blankenship came up to me in the locker room one evening during a high school football game.  He was our starting kicker.  He came up to me with tears in his eyes and said, “I want to ask Jesus into my heart.”  I said, “Right now?!”  He said, “Right now!”  We’d never talked about it but he knew I was a Christian.  I still couldn’t figure it out.  Here we were right in the middle of a game and Billy wanted Jesus.  Trust me, it’s not that I didn’t want to help Billy.  And, the way the Brownfield Cubs played, it’s remarkable that more of them didn’t meet Jesus during games.  It’s just that Billy’s faith caught me off guard.  I hadn’t set this up with a masterful invitation.  But, for some reason, Jesus had asked Billy to trust him that night and Billy wasn’t going to let me go until I helped him.  So, right there in the locker room, he prayed to receive Christ into his life.  Years later, I was called to a church as youth minister and there he and his wife, his high school sweetheart, sat, still faithful years later, still full of his salvation’s joy.

Maybe for some that’s an over-simplified sentimental story.  But, sometimes it comes back to me in the middle of controlling, corralling and calendaring.  Sometimes I miss that kind of simple, spontaneous explosion of faith that says, “I’m not leaving here until I find Jesus.” 

Those objects in our rearview mirrors can either be obstacles to growth and joy or opportunities for the same.  Which of the two they are is strictly up to us.