Ryan's Ramblings

Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed by day.
—2 Corinthians 4:16, NIV

The Old Tire


As one of four, I carried a car;

On business of utmost import.

From summit to shore, I traveled afar;

All the while my time growing short.

I rolled along, till my tread was all spent;

Tossed away—thin, worn and unfit.

On the side of the road, to the ditch I was sent;

To die lying still in the pit.

But life ebbed again at the hand of a boy;

A push and a roll were my test.

I found all joy, in the guise of a toy;

These miles are some of my best.

I saw two boys at an orphanage in Bangalore, India, pushing an old tire they had found along the road. They didn’t have soccer balls, video games, or playground equipment—but they had that tire. Around and around they went, laughing and shouting, their bare feet kicking up red dust.

I couldn’t stop watching. That tire was finished—thrown to the side, discarded, worn out—but in the hands of those boys, it was reborn. Its “best miles” weren’t spent carrying the weight of a car. They were spent bringing joy.

And it struck me: even while that tire was doing what it was made to do—carrying its load, being “important”—it was wearing down. Its time was growing short with every mile.

Isn’t that us? We spend years doing what matters most—raising kids, serving others, building businesses, loving our neighbors—carrying the weight God has entrusted to us. And yet, even in those seasons of purpose, our strength runs down, our tread wears thin.

Sometimes I feel like that old tire. Maybe you do too. Spent. Worn down. Forgotten. There are days I wonder if my best miles are behind me—if the most valuable part of me has already been used up.

And it stirs something deep—that ache for what once was, for the strength we used to have, for the laughter and lightness of childhood. We hear that longing echoed in some of our most nostalgic lines of poetry:

Backward, turn backward, O time in your flight.
Make me a child again just for tonight.
—Elizabeth Akers Allen—

That longing is real—and good. It points us to something we were made for: wonder, trust, and the chance to begin again.

Jesus offers something better than turning back the clock. He says, “Unless you turn and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3, ESV).

The Kingdom life isn’t about proving we can still carry the weight of the world—it’s about learning to trust, to wonder, to play again.

Even when we feel discarded, Jesus doesn’t leave us in the ditch. He stoops down, picks us up, and rolls us into new life.

Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day (2 Corinthians 4:16, NIV).

Maybe your “important miles” are done. Perhaps that’s not a loss—maybe that’s grace. The best miles aren’t the ones that prove your strength, but the ones that reveal His.

Let Jesus pick you up. Let Him renew you. Let Him roll you toward joy again—because in Him, …the best miles are always in front of you.