Monday, June 15, 2020
709 - Gimme Shelter, Part 1
Spirituality Column #709
June 16, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Gimme Shelter, Part 1
By Bob Walters
“Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him;
I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.” – Psalm 91:14
It was admittedly an odd spot to have this particular
revelation, and it was long before I came to know Christ, but I remember the
moment vividly to this very day.
The topic here is “realizing you are
part of something bigger than yourself,” even if the lesson emanated from
secular life. For me I think it was helpful
– maybe even necessary –to get that concept in worldly perspective before I
could truly appreciate being attached to the divine perspective that is bigger
than all things – Jesus Christ.
The occasion – this is the “odd spot” part – was the
retirement tribute program at the Indianapolis Athenaeum in May 1993 for
four-time Indianapolis 500 champion Rick Mears.
I spent a chunk of my career writing about and publicizing professional
racing and in 1993 was the Public Relations Director at the Indianapolis Motor
Speedway.
I hired into that job a year earlier in January 1992, still
nearly 10 years personally away from Jesus.
But I understood the Speedway’s “bigness” … with an ecclesiastical
spin. When asked what it was like to
“work at the Speedway” I had a ready aphorism: “If you’re going to work in
religion, you may as well work at the Vatican.”
I really felt that way; IMS was and is a very big deal in
auto racing. And after nearly eight
years traveling with the family circus of drivers, teams, sponsors, officials,
and media of Indy Car and NASCAR I pretty much knew everybody. It was all normal. I was like the fish who doesn’t get the
concept of water because it’s in it all the time.
It wasn’t just the race tracks. There were fancy “do’s” like the NASCAR
banquet in New York City, any number of formal events around Indy and CART,
parties here and charity benefits there.
That was a time in my life I owned two tuxedos. Both fit.
Don’t worry … I’m not going to compare Rick Mears to
Jesus. But I knew Rick well enough to
like him and that 1993 Indy event Marlboro hosted for him – the program itself
– was remarkably well done. Rick had sustained
crash injuries the previous two years and at age 41 probably retired “before
his time.” It fed the emotion of the
evening.
In that program the best-known, best-liked,
best competitors and personalities in racing brought their “A” game to honor
Rick’s driving career. I don’t remember
a single specific thing about the program, but strolling out into the theater
lobby at its conclusion it struck me not “how lucky to be a part of it” but how
much bigger than me it all was.
Well, the glory days. I internalized this idea of “bigger than me,” though
it didn’t change my life or “save me.”
What I had, in a revelatory and newly mysterious way, was gratitude for
a larger “thing” in relation to the relative smallness of my own being.
Next week we’ll talk about something “bigger than me” – a shelter
– that changes all of us.
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