Check Engine

My check engine light is on right now.

Seriously.

Every time I start my car, there it is—that little orange light none of us ever wants to see.

And like any responsible adult, I’ve handled it the only reasonable way possible:

I’ve kept driving.

The car still starts. It still gets me where I need to go. From the outside, everything seems fine.

But that light is there for a reason.

Something underneath the hood isn’t working the way it was designed to.

I recently finished Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, and staring at that little orange light on my dashboard took me back to one particular line:

I couldn’t shake the simplicity of that.

It made me question the things we expect to sustain us that were never designed to.

An engine doesn’t get to decide what it was designed to run on.

Put the wrong thing in the tank, and eventually the engine will let you know something isn’t right.

Maybe we’re not so different.

Money. Success. Recognition. Pleasure. Accomplishment. Even self-improvement.

None of those things are inherently bad.

That might actually be what makes them so easy to confuse for fuel.

We pour more and more of them into our lives expecting them to finally satisfy something inside of us. And when they don’t, our first instinct usually isn’t to question what we’re relying on.

We assume we just need more.

More money. More success. More recognition. The next goal. The next purchase. The next accomplishment.

Meanwhile, the check engine light stays on.

Maybe some of the things we call emptiness are really just hunger.

Maybe the problem isn’t how much we’re putting in.

Maybe we’ve been filling ourselves with the wrong things.

Lewis continues:

That’s a hard sentence to sit with.

Not because money, success, relationships, or accomplishments can’t bring us happiness. They can.

But they were never designed to sustain us.

And maybe that’s why the chase never really ends.

I’m finishing Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 1929, and the story of Jesse Livermore has been sitting with me.

Livermore made a fortune betting against the market as it collapsed—around $100 million. While fortunes were disappearing all around him, he had achieved the kind of financial success most people could only dream of.

Yet eleven years later, after enduring personal and financial struggles of his own, Livermore took his own life.

I would never pretend to know everything that was happening inside of him or reduce his death to money alone.

But the contrast is hard to ignore. If $100 million couldn’t sustain a man, why do we convince ourselves that our next number will sustain us?

You hit the goal, and before long there’s another one.

You make more money, and somehow the number that once sounded like enough isn’t enough anymore.

You finally get the thing you wanted, enjoy it for a while, and eventually your eyes wander toward the next thing.

The engine keeps running, so we assume the fuel must be working.

And I think that might be the dangerous part.

The warning signs don’t always look like complete breakdowns.

Sometimes you’re still productive. Still providing. Still accomplishing things. Still laughing. Still moving forward.

You can travel a long way with a light glowing on the dashboard.

But distance traveled doesn’t mean everything underneath the hood is healthy.

Yahusha put it much more plainly:

A branch separated from the vine doesn’t need more discipline.

It doesn’t need more money.

It doesn’t need another accomplishment.

It needs the Source.

There’s a difference between building a better life and trying to make that life sustain your soul.

I can work on becoming a better husband. A better father. More disciplined. More financially secure. More successful.

I should.

But none of those things can replace the Source.

My check engine light is still on, by the way.

I should probably get that checked.

But every time I start the car and see it now, I think about that line from Lewis.

“God designed the human machine to run on Himself.”

And maybe we have warning lights too.

That restlessness we can’t shake. The constant need for more. The feeling that the next accomplishment, purchase, paycheck, or milestone will finally quiet something inside of us.

Maybe those feelings aren’t always problems we need to outrun.

Maybe they’re indicators.

A reason to stop for a moment, look under the hood, and ask whether we’re operating the way we were designed to.

I still want to build. I still want to accomplish things. I still want to become a better husband, father, and man. None of that changes.

But I don’t want to confuse the things I’m building with the One who designed me.

Maybe the answer to that warning light isn’t finding another thing to pour into my life.

Maybe it’s surrender.

Wholeheartedly picking up my cross, following Yahusha, and allowing my life to run the way it was designed to.

I don’t need another source of fuel.

I need the Source.

Yahusha.

Until next time,

Javier
Compounding Thoughts