harley grace

okay, i’m still overwhelmed by the grace of God as i think about the story i have to tell, but, here goes. it will have to come through several posts because it’s pretty long but the work of God through every detail (at least as much as i will be able to fit in) is simply astounding, amazing, astonishing and any other good “a” words a person could think of.

the whole story begins with a motorcycle and ends (although the story is still going on. eventually you will see what i mean.) with a motorcycle in a big way. and people who know me personally know that i like to ride motorcycles. it’s just something i have always loved to do. it probably started with my dad because i still have this vivid memory from my childhood in which my father placed me on the gas tank (i was probably 4-5 years old) of his cruiser and took me on my first ride. the experience of that day just stuck with me.

anyway, people know i love to ride. i owned a bike in college (a kawasaki since my dad had a kawasaki) but sold it to buy an engagement ring for this really special lady i met (evelyn) and then married after graduation. now, i have never had any regrets about selling the bike to buy the ring, really. but … i have missed riding ever since and i knew that some day i would get back to it.

so, over the past three years or so i started to really get the bug again and on one “pastor appreciation sunday” my congregation surprised me with a gift certificate for a rental of my favorite kind of bike – a harley-davidson. i rented the bike for three days and fell in love with the riding experience all over again. i couldn’t shake it. so much was this the case that the church just gave me a rental gift certificate every year on “pastor appreciation sunday” and my wife bought me at least one rental as a birthday present.

i started renting a bike several times a year and, as you can read in my previous posts, began riding with other minister friends that i discovered had the riding bug too. it was through one of these minister buddies (rich neubauer) that i learned of the honorbound motorcycle ministry – a ministry that trains you how to share the Christ-life with folks in the biker culture. i was attending the annual minister’s retreat sponsored by my denomination when i happened to run into rich and a few other guys who, like me (except not like me in that i was renting my ride), had ridden their bikes to the retreat center.

rich and some of the bikers/pastors with him were wearing leather vests (as well as boots, chaps, head wraps, etc.) with huge colorfully embroidered patches on the back – pretty radical looking garb for pentecostal preachers. i asked rich about the meaning of the patches which included a crown fashioned from thorns and a cross made from three nails dead center of the crown. what rich explained to me in that moment and in the hours that followed as we spent the retreat time together brought something fresh and wonderful and fulfilling in my life. more later…