At a stoplight on my way home this evening I found myself behind a Mazda Miata. It is a car I had once thought about getting when I was looking for something cool to drive. It didn’t take me long to look elsewhere. It’s sporty, but not a sports car and it takes a special kind of person to drive one. The Miata just makes the driver look prettier - whether the driver is female or as in this case male. But anyway, I’m behind a white Miata and the first thing I noticed was a Sammy Sosa bumper sticker. Which is okay, even given the fact that I’m about 300 miles from Chicago. Next to the Sosa sticker was another Cubs sticker. So the guy’s a Cubs fan - big deal. But to the left of the Sosa is a bumper sticker reading Acts 2:38. A religious guy and a Cubs fans?! I guess if you’re going to be a fan of the Chicago Cubs a lot of praying is required. But what’s so special about Acts 2:38? I figured I’ll write it down and maybe look it up later. As I wrote it down I noticed that this was no ordinary bumper sticker. This person got the individual letters and digits and put them on his bumper. They were kind of like the stickers you’d put on your mailbox. Apparently, this guy appreciated Acts 2:38 so much that he went to a hardware store, bought stickers of each letter and number - he used two minus signs for the colon - and then put them on the bumper of his white Mazda Miata right next to Sammy Sosa. Now I’m intrigued.
So I get home and start typing this thing when I realize that I don’t have a Bible. That’s right, no Bible. I have the complete works of Shakespeare in numerous forms, no less than six editions of A Tale of Two Cities, various collections of Mark Twain and really just about every other significant piece of literature from The Iliad and Beowulf to Life of Pi and White Teeth. However, this is not my first actual realization of this fact. Not so long ago, while in a book store, my wife asked if we had a Bible. Upon my answer of "no" we headed over to the section where they could be found. After more than a few seconds of staring, she asked me, "How in the hell can there be so many different Bibles? Don’t they all say the same thing?" To make a long story short, we didn’t buy a Bible but I did pick up a nice book on the introduction to Buddhism. So we still do not have a Bible, and here comes the bad pun of the piece…thank god for the internet.
Acts 2:38 reads, "Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost."
I have one dollar for the first person that can tell me what that has to do with Sammy Sosa. I have another dollar if anyone can tell me what the "gift of the Holy Ghost" is. And still another if anyone can tell me why Microsoft Word doesn’t recognize "ye" (yea, yen, yep yes, yet but no ye.) So bring those answers to me and you can be a winner. As for the guy driving the Miata, he’s a winner too. If his only plan was to make someone, just one person, look up Acts 2:38 then he wins. And for now he’s just not quite as much of a loser as most other guys that drive Mazda Miata’s. Did I mention he had a dolphin figurine hanging from his rear-view mirror?
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