The Mechanic Who Fixed Cars on Faith

In 2014, a transmission shop owner named Cathy Heying opened a garage in a rough stretch of South Minneapolis. But Cathy's shop, the Lift Garage, wasn't built to turn a profit. It was built to serve people who couldn't afford one more bill. Single mothers with check-engine lights they'd been ignoring for months. Veterans sleeping in cars that wouldn't start. Elderly couples choosing between groceries and brake pads.

Cathy charged what people could pay — sometimes ten dollars, sometimes nothing. She trained formerly incarcerated men as mechanics, giving them skills and dignity in the same stroke. When donors asked if she worried about running out of funds, she'd shake her head. "The money shows up," she said. "It always shows up."

And it did. Year after year, the Lift Garage kept its doors open, its bays full, and its mission clear. Cathy didn't flinch at bad financial news. She didn't hoard resources against an uncertain future. She scattered her gifts freely among the poor, exactly as the psalmist describes, and her righteousness — her stubborn, grease-stained, practical righteousness — endured.

Psalm 112 paints a portrait of someone whose heart is steady because it trusts in the Lord. That person lends generously, deals justly, and is not shaken by evil tidings. The wicked see it and gnash their teeth, because a life rooted in the fear of the Almighty simply cannot be undone. Cathy Heying lives that psalm with a wrench in her hand.