Irreverent
Your first car might have been cool, but it wasn’t as cool as Sam Posey’s. Posey, the veteran racer and Emmy-winning sports writer and commentator, began his conspicuous automotive career with a rather conspicuous first car: The 1954 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing. Perfect match for a 14 year-old, no? It was 1958, and the Gullwing was old news, having been replaced by the 300SL Roadster two years prior. Brand new, these were $7,300 cars, but a used Gullwing showed up near the Posey farm with a $2,500 asking price, about the cost of a new Oldsmobile.
He brought his mom along for the test drive.
“She wasn’t concerned by how fast it was; on a test drive along an unpatrolled back road with her on board, I took it up to 120, and she could see that I was right at home… For weeks that first summer, I practiced my heel-and-toe technique. I tore up fields as I learned to drift, stopping now and then to clear the alfalfa out of the radiator… One winter, mice built a home in the engine bay.” (from Where the Writer Meets the Road by Sam Posey)
Alfalfa? Mice?! Today, Gullwings are worth $500,000 or more. Most are rarely seen, let alone driven, let alone driven through alfalfa fields. Sam’s relationship with his Gullwing might seem sacrilegious, too familiar, or irreverent. But it’s a great illustration of how approachable God is to his people:
“Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’” (Galatians 4:6)
Abba, Aramaic for Father, is an intimate call, like “Dad.” It’s the address Jesus used as he cried out in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:36). At such times, there’s no use for formalities or official titles. These are moments of desperation, and God desperately wants his people to approach him with such raw emotion. In fact, the Greek phrase describing the Spirit calling out implies an inarticulate yell, like a baby crying in the middle of the night.
God has never asked you to clean yourself up and come to him in your best clothes with a prescribed arrangement of fancy words and invocations. He doesn’t want you to hide your emotions and submit a cleaned-up prayer to him. He is the creator of emotion. He is the God of familiarity, who delights in walking with his people and intervening in their lives for their benefit. You can talk to him about whatever you want. Including cars.
The 3.0-liter, fuel-injected straight-six in the 300SL Gullwing was rated at 240 horsepower at 6,000 rpm, quite a bit for a teenager in the 1950s. Sam knew each of those 240 horses intimately: “Occasionally I’d go for a late-night run on public roads. Magazines had touted the SL being good for 160 mph, but the most I ever saw was 145…” Amazing. But he wouldn’t have known the feeling of all that power if he was too afraid to approach it.
John V16 is the intersection of God and cars. Please support our work and donate a V16-powered 1940 Cadillac Series 90 Sixteen to John V16. Or share this article with a friend.
