Last week we experienced a cold snap, like 1 degree, that lasted for a couple of days. About 5 days later my wife went over to the churches parsonage which has been vacant for several months to check on things. The ice cascade out of the back door provided her with an initial response that something was wrong, and when she opened the door and heard water running her fear was quickly confirmed. Evidently, a water pipe in the upstairs bathroom ruptured do to the cold, sending water raining down in the basement and through the bathroom wall into the kitchen and dining room area. The basement sump pumps are all that saved it from being worse that it is. As it is the false ceiling in the basement is now all over the floor, the carpet is soaking wet, & the drywall in the downstairs bathroom is no longer dry and rests on top of the sink & stool.
Once I found the water shut off and contacted the insurance company, we started the clean up process. I called a national company that deals with such things and met them at the parsonage the next day. But when I tried to turn up the heat to help dry it out, we discovered that the furnace wasn't working. AH-HA the reason the pipes froze! So I called our furnace guy, who came right over. What he found was a chipmunk, now dead an decaying, stuck between the blower fan (i.e., squirrel cage) and the blower fan housing, effectively locking up the furnace blower so that even though the furnace would come on, it wouldn't heat the house. The rascal had entered through the dryer vent, chewed through the plastic flex hose, found its way into the heater vents to the furnace, chewed through the filter, only to come to his demise when the blower kicked on, I'm sure quite unexpectedly.
OK, that got me thinking about us and God. There are times when we go vacant from God. We get comfortable with our relationship and slowly stop spending time in His Word every day. Or maybe there's that part of our life we withhold from Him because we're not ready to give Him control of it yet. There's several ways I think we go 'vacant' from our relationship with God. Then, in our vacant state, 'trouble' shows up in the most adorable fashion, and appearing quite innocent begins to scamper around in our 'vacancy'. And before you know it, havoc is being reeked in our 'vacant area' at a great personal cost. And instead of being on fire and full of light, we end up the frozen chosen wandering in the dark.
PJ
