The Broken Bike

My oldest son, Landon, recently learned to ride his bike without training wheels. He rides his bike every day. Yesterday he started pulling up on the handle bars and popped a few wheelies. Before he could learn how to pop some wheelies, he brought me his bike with the chain off. I knew that it would be imperative to repair his bike because he would want to ride it soon. Not only was the chain off, but the crank arms were loose.

For those of you who don't know, I am not the most mechanically inclined. I do like to tackle a problem, so I got out my tools.

I made an attempt to put the crank arms back together the best I knew how. Gripping, pushing, pulling and spraying WD-40 (because that stuff fixes anything!). It seemed there was not hope in sight. I was weighing our options - defeat seemed close.

Than I was reminded that my father had once made a similar repair on the same bike. I called him and asked his advise. He recounted what he done the last time and how to repair it.

After a break, I went back to the project. Remembering the advise, I put the bike back together again.

Landon hopped on to give it a test drive. He seemed to be having trouble about every third crank. I asked him to get off and I test the wheel by cranking with my arm. There was a problem. Although it seemed repaired, about every third crank it was very difficult to turn the arm. I started to disassemble the bike in order to correct whatever error I had made.

Upon my second attempt, I put the bike back together again and there was much rejoicing. Before letting Landon ride off, I spun the wheel around several times with ease. He hopped on and sped off.

I am remind about my relationship with God in this story.  Sometimes we don't know what we are doing.  Sometimes we mess up the first time, second time, third time...lets face it we are going to mess up a whole bunch of times.  But when we call on the Father in heaven, He is going to help us.  It wasn't until I called my father and asked him to help me...

Have you called on your heavenly Father to help you with your struggles?  With your doubt?  With your worry?  With anything?  He is there and willing to help you, but are you willing to make that phone call and ask Him for help.

Blessings.