Let God drive your SUV

So a guy has to decide what to buy his wife for Christmas, a diamond necklace or an SUV. He decides on the necklace. His friend asks about the decision.

“They cost about the same, why did you get her the diamonds?” the friend asks.

“Because I haven’t be able to find a fake SUV.”

Ah, the really good storytellers always start off with a joke and Fr. Mike Coleman is one of the best.

Fr. Coleman, St. Pius X Catholic Church, was the featured speaker at Wednesday’s Altrusa Lenten Luncheon, the third in a series this year.

He promised a talk using the anagram SUV to discuss faith. But he told stories about being a shy kid, a girl who changed his outlook on life, a group of friends, and the Moberly Lady Spartan basketball team.

Neat stories, easy to listen to but where’s the Lenten Luncheon?

But then the hodge podge of stories came together to form a beautiful tapestry, one including the love of God for us, no matter which denomination we devote ourselves to.

Fr. Mike said he was shy as a young man with very low self-estemm, especially when it came to girls. One day a friend who was a girl took him out to the Dairy Queen. A beautiful waitress noticed him and said yes when he asked her out.

“That changed my life,” said the man of his pre-priest days. “I learned I wasn’t as bad as I thought. I broke out of my shell. Who would have thought that shy kid would be doing this today.”

“God can do anything in our lives,” said Fr. Coleman. “Never be surprised at what God can do in your life.”

He had a small core of friends as a youth. They drifted apart but after 20 years they found each other again and now are in close contact. One day during a week of revival when he was celebrating mass, he had the opportunity to go out with “the beautiful waitress” and they again went to the Dairy Queen. They talked and had fun. She told how she had drifted from the church.

“Wouldn’t you like to go tonight and take Holy Communion,” he asked her.

“But how after 34 years?”

“Just ask God for His forgiveness”

And she did.

“Young kids often times think they are unloveable,” said Fr. Coleman. “And some older people think they can’t be forgiven. But as a wise man once said, ‘When the devil reminds you of your past, you remind him of his future.’”

Fr. Coleman is quite the sports aficionado and announces basketball games. This year he was especially close to the Lady Spartans, and not just because seven of the girls on the team are Catholic. He explained watching Friday’s nail-biter district championship game and thinking of the game so narrowly lost two years before. The great Lady Spartan of that time, Ashley Agee, was on the phone with him, texting back and forth keeping up with the game.

With 2,000 people in attendance, the score stayed close, then in the final quarter he watched it start to drift away.

“Oh, no, not again.”

But then Tierney Siefert took control and with some three-pointers, “his” girls won.

“I’m trying to call the game and in-between I’m texting Ashley, all the while tears are just rolling down my face.”

“Jesus came down from the cross,” said Coleman. “He was only there for three hours. Christians are never stuck on the cross. No matter what happens, or how long you have been away from Him, God brings you through it towards resurrection.”

Fr. Mike reminded the gathering what St. Paul said in the book of Timothy about fighting the good, having run the good race.

“I read the end of the book,” Fr. Coleman exclaimed. “I know how it turns out. The good guys win!”

Coleman said it is amazing what God can do for you, never be surprised. He will always take you back. And though we go through sorrows and tragedies, he said, we will win.

“Christ took the greatest sign of fear and turned it into the greatest sign of hope.”

After a final prayer he directed the group to “Go get ‘em!”

Rev. Doug Delp of Timberlake Christian Church will be the speaker for next week’s luncheon.