Joey’s Blog

My wife’s birthday is Monday and while out buying her presents the dash of our Prius lights up like a christmas tree, and a very unhapy looking icon shows up on the information display.  It reminded me of the Sad Mac that apple computers used to display.  Then, the car lost all power.  Fortunatly, I wasn’t in traffic where this would create a hazard.  I pulled over and tried to restart the car a few times, to no avail.  After about 10 minutes, the car started, and I drove it into a parking lot.  I waited some more, and after a succesful start, drove another mile.  This stop and go behaivor continued for another 30 minutes.  I finaly ended up at a gas station, and called my home teacher.  While waiting for him to arrive, I pulled out my blackberry and found an article written by some great mechanics that said that said filling the car up with Gas fixed the problem.  Now, the problem isn’t that the car is out of gas, just that for some reason, the Prius’s Bladder type tank (I think we all have extrapolated that it’s due to the bladder at least) is preventing the engine from getting the last quarter tank of gas.  So even though my car still had a gallon of gas, and the gauge said 1/4 tank, the engine wasn’t getting fuel.

My home teacher arrived with 2 other friends and a big truck to help me get the car home, fortunatly, once I filled it up, everything seemed to work fine.  Unhoooking the auxillary battery and re-connecting it cleared the “Triangle of Death” (not to mention our programmed radio stations :(  ).  I am a little concerned still, as the main screen flickered on and off and the classic hybrid “clunk” noise was made repeatedly when the car wouldn’t go, but I am just going to hope it’s all ok and rack those things up to side affects to an uncommon state in a complex system.

It was a HUGE relief to read the article about other people having the same problem.  The owners manual calls the light the “Hybrid System Warning Light”, and says that it indicates a problem with the motor (I assumed electric motor), inverter, or some other fancy part.  So, when I saw the light an image of a large sum of money leaving my bank flashed before my eyes…  I just figured something this smart, with an integrated touch screen, wouldn’t flash this scary looking icon, and stop engine power unless something was seriously wrong…  I guess I need to remember that while Toyota engineer’s may walk on water they still can’t make a car run without gas.

During a recent Sunday morning church meeting, a Patriarch spoke. He started his talk with these words: “Not very far from here is a small Methodist chapel. Early on a Saturday morning, many of the members of it’s congregation were out by the road in front of the building waving signs for those that passed by. As two of the members of that congregation were talking to each other a car passed by quickly without slowing down. A few moments later, there was a sound of screeching brakes followed by the sound of twisting metal and braking glass. One of the brother’s looked at the other and said “He must have ignored the sign”. His friend replied “Which one?” to which he was answered “Bridge Out”. ”

The patriarch then spoke for several minutes on the many modern conveniences we enjoy today. The modern miracles that make our life easy. He also spoke about the fact that there are many hardships that every man experienced in days past but now a days almost no one deals with. Problems such as where the food will come from, will a fire destroy out fields and all our work this year, will a disease take the lives of any of my children, etc…

He then drew a parallel, and spoke about how these things caused men to humble themselves and pray to the Lord for help, that they formed “A Bridge” between man and God. But today, all of those bridges are out. It was a very very enlightening talk, providing a very understandable and memorable perspective on trials, not a new perspective, just a new powerful way of putting them in the right perspective.

His talk didn’t stop there. Had it stopped there, it would have just made everyone feel bad for the anxiety we feel when we face relatively minor (compared to early saints) life events. Instead he went on and said we should set aggressive goals, and feel anxiety to reach those goals, and use the anxiety that those goals create as that humbling bridge.

Anyways… All that aside. We all know the world’s morals have been declining. Common understanding of basic principles (such as the law of the harvest, traditional families, morality) have become more and more rare. We knew it long before Obama was elected today. He isn’t the first president who’s proposed programs ruffle the conservative Christians feathers and he won’t be the last. In Obama’s attempts to help the middle class he may completely dissolve the “Bridges” that humble some, but at the same time he will undoubtedly create new Bridges for others. I am not trying to promote Apathy, or support evil rulers, I just feel that it is extremely easy to loose perspective and think that this marks the end of the world, when it is just another mile marker on the road.

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