The Beloved Oddball
Volvo’s P1800ES debuted in 1973 and remains a cult favorite 50 years later thanks to Volvo’s signature blend of practicality, oddness, and charm. This two-door hatchback was introduced 12 whole years into the P1800’s production run, and benefited from all the previous model-year improvements, including fuel injection, disc brakes, and a displacement boost to 2.0 liters. While it shares its heroic jaw line and simple (or simplistic) front end with the conventionally attractive P1800 coupe, it soon loses the plot and goes full art teacher in the rear. Its orthopedically inspired seats were the only luxurious aspect to its interior. Its styling was already dated by 1973, and its Amazon-based chassis was nearly old enough to vote.
But it would be the P1800ES hatchback, not the coupe, which would be the muse for nearly every Volvo that came after it (see, for example, the Polestar 1, one of the heaviest, priciest, and most powerful 4-cylinder coupes of the 21st century with styling a decade or two old at its introduction). Practicality, oddness, and charm would define Volvo, so the perfect distillation of these three traits would be the trunk in its family tree.
This is the message of the folks who serve in the family tree of Jesus. There are some real oddballs in Jesus’ lineage (including some poor guy named “Salmon”). Most of them have brief, shining moments of faithfulness and piety interspersed with rather clumsy behavior that’s just definitively human. Yet these are the people God chose to be part of his family.
Isaac is a great example. When a famine struck, he went to a town called Gerar, deep in Philistine territory, en route to Egypt. He just wanted some food, but God knew how easily he could become tempted, so he intervened:
“The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, ‘Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. Stay in the land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed.” (Genesis 26:2-4)
Even after this assurance, Isaac lied about his beautiful wife, calling her his sister, to protect them. God hadn’t asked Isaac to lie and deceive to protect himself. God said the opposite. He promised his complete provision, protection, and purpose-filled direction.
Isaac and the Volvo P1800ES hatch are great examples of oddballs with great purpose, yet so are the roughly 100 billion people who have ever lived. An almighty, all-knowing God, who has numbered “the very hairs on your head” (Luke 12:7), holds the grand scheme for restoring humankind to himself. Yet he uses the oddballs of humankind to accomplish this.
The exact ways a perfect, omniscient God uses sinful, self-willed humans to accomplish a perfect plan has preoccupied the thoughts of countless philosophers and theologians throughout history. To put it plainly and ecumenically, God’s plans are not thwarted by sinful error. When one of his beloved oddballs zigs, God zags. When someone feels out of place, imperfect, forgotten, or unworthy, God reminds them that such attributes have defined every human at some point, along with these descriptors: loved, cherished, chosen, forgiven, and blessed. Humans distinguish between patriarch and peon, proletariat and plebe, but God doesn’t. He desires “all nations on earth” to be blessed.
The P1800ES’s proportions have aged marvelously. Five decades later, it sure seems like nothing else, yet there were others like it. The Reliant Scimitar GTE of 1968 is the obvious example, along with various coach-built bodies in estate and shooting brake form dating back decades. Perhaps this makes the P1800ES even more special; its specialness can’t be quantified, only revealed by its full growth. God would like to encourage all his children to think of themselves the same way.
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