Alas, my own "stuck" cars would not have made this dramatic a photo. Photo by Alan Vernon (flickr/creative commons).

Last Sunday, as I was already running late for 7:30 worship, I got stuck at home because a broken spring in the garage door wouldn’t let it open to get the car out.

Stuck-car moments seem to be a theme with me. I don’t have much experience with broken down cars, but on a regular basis I get a car stuck somewhere—for example, in a too-tight parking space that I could barely get into and then couldn’t get out of. (That story became one of my favorite sermon illustrations and is also in my book.)

In another example, during the Christianity 21 gathering in Minneapolis last October, I was headed to a church downtown with a new friend I met at the conference. Running a bit late for worship (also a theme!), we parked in the lot next to the church, which appeared to be a weekday sort of office. So we guessed that it would be okay to park there for an hour on a Sunday morning.

When we came out of church, we discovered that it had not been okay. The parking lot was filled, and a line of parallel-parked cars created another layer behind and perpendicular to the marked spaces. We had not looked closely enough at the sign; we were in the parking lot of a Mormon church, whose worship had begun just after the one we were attending. Two cars were parked behind ours, and we were stuck.

The cars parked behind us had left a space, just about the width of my friend’s rental car, but the space wasn’t directly behind us; it was offset a few feet to the right. If only we could maneuver just right… We tried, but no luck. The car just couldn’t turn sharply enough without scraping the cars on either side of us.

Just at that moment (and really, it was “just at that moment”) a couple came out of the building. I apologized for our out-of-towner gaffe and asked when the parking lot might clear out. “Oh, these cars won’t be out of here for a couple hours,” the man said. He appraised our situation: “But I think I can get you out of there.”

We were skeptical, but my friend agreed to follow his directions, which were completely counterintuitive. His wife must have seen the look on my face, because she said, “He’s a driver’s ed teacher. He’s gotten us out of tighter spaces than this.”

And yes, he got us unstuck, too. We headed back to the hotel, repeating the story to each other: “Just as we discovered we were stuck, just at that moment who should emerge but a driver’s ed teacher?!”

Here’s where this becomes an Advent story. The world, too, is “stuck”—not only through our countless human gaffes and blunders and missteps but also through just plain evil. We get ourselves into holes so deep we cannot get ourselves out of them. Of course, we have all kinds of ways of trying to maneuver ourselves out of the places in which we’re stuck (economically, psychologically, environmentally, socially, you name it), but we discover sooner or later that we just can’t do it ourselves. In fact, often it’s our clever maneuvers that get us in deeper. The way out is counterintuitive to everything we know about life, and we won’t figure out how to get out with the same skills that got us in.

And then—just at that moment when we’re about to give up hope—that’s when God shows up in the flesh, not just as a guide or teacher but as one who gives his own self to the world. In that giving, God reminds us that there is no place we can get stuck that God cannot reach us with love and hope.

So in Advent we repeat the story to each other of God’s coming to all of our “stuck” places, and pray for that coming once again. Fortunately, I did make it to church last Sunday to participate in that story-telling once again–thanks to a neighbor who usually attended 11:00 worship but who, just at that moment, was leaving for the 7:30 service.