Providential Plumbing

This afternoon I enjoyed a brief respite from my teaching and housekeeping duties. My mom kindly offered to watch the kids so I could indulge in a half hour walk - to hear myself think and breathe some fresh January air. As I waddled my way up her road, I mused on this past week and the various challenges it has presented.

For some reason, we haven't been able to find our groove since Christmas vacation. This is due in part to all of the extra hours Stephen has worked (in anticipation of his upcoming trips to California). Our carefully planned schedule has failed time and again, and we have reached the end of many a 13-hour day feeling exhausted and overhwhelmed.

My reserves of energy and patience have been at an all time low as the kids and I have been cooped up inside, plugging away at prolonged school days and dealing with the antics and distractions of a bored 2 year old. Our resident "Picasso" has channeled his creative energies into redecorating our home. His handiwork has been found in the form of multi-colored tiles and elaborate murals on my walls. (Most parents just hide pills and sharp objects from their toddlers. I, on the other hand, must ban all pencils, crayons, paints and markers, - quite a challenge since every surface in our home is cluttered with school and art supplies). He has also channeled his boredom into dumping out everything he can get his hands on - toy bins, trash cans, math manipulatives, bags of crackers... How convenient that my vacuum cleaner broke just as this new habit emerged.

As I scaled snow banks and shivered my way along Primrose Lane, I considered my most recent Bible study in The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. There was an odd analogy given which required quite a bit of mulling over before the meaning began to sink in. Burroughs spent nearly two pages comparing God's provision to pipes that run into our home. "A godly heart enjoys much of God in everything he has, and knows how to make up all wants in God Himself." He explains that "if the children of God have their little taken from them, they can make up all their wants in God himself...'The pipe is cut off,' says God, 'come to me, the fountain, and drink immediately...' Burroughs goes on to say, "...It may be, that is the reason why your outward comforts are taken from you, that God may be all in all to you. It may be that while you had these things they shared with God in your affection, a great part of the stream of your affection ran that way; God would have the full stream run to him now...when you enjoyed these things...a great deal of your affection ran waste...your (affections) are precious, and God would not have them to run waste; therefore he has cut off your other pipes that your heart might flow wholly to him." (Burroughs, pg. 66-67)

I might have dismissed this passage as interesting but somewhat irrelevent were it not for a tangile object lesson that God brought my way this week. Would you believe me if I told you that, with no warning, the water pipes in our home have gone completely bezerk? What a perplexing thing it is when you go to take a shower, and you're not sure what temperature of water (if any!) will come when you turn the faucet. And when you don't want water, it just seems to drip and pool in every place but where you need it. I nearly laughed out loud when the parallel between this nuisance of pipes and the challenges I'm up against in my day-to-day life hit me. How easy it would be, if things were always going smoothly, to dismiss my desperate need for God's help and intervention in every detail of my day and in the lives of my children. I have seen myself settle into subtle forms of spiritual laziness, where I presume upon God's goodness the way I assume that my faucets will provide water on demand. I pray that this lesson would not go to waste, that I would truly learn to draw my sustenance and significance from Him (not from my best-laid plans, accomplishments, or the blessings He brings along the way) and that "God may be all in all to me here in this world."