A Few Grains Of Sand
1 Kings 4:29 -
And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding
much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on
the sea shore. (KJV)
As I was away most of the fall doing "grandma duty", there
wasn't much water consumption at my home. And so it was
quite a shock to receive a water bill that was hundreds of
dollars and gallons beyond our normal usage. The city sent
us a notice saying that, due to the excessive amount, there
must be a water leak somewhere.
There was no loss of water pressure that would have
indicated a problem, and Christmas, New Year, a snowfall,
and a cold snap made for delays in discovering where the
leak originated.
However, the day came when the water was turned off, and the
yard dug up. And there, deep down close to the house, a well
of water was springing from where the line had been cracked
ever so gently by the pressure of rocks and roots. It was
also discovered that the line had not originally been laid
upon a bed of sand, so they trucked in some sand for a
secure bed, laid the new line, turned the water back on, and
voila! Everything worked just fine.
A few days later, however, the water in the spout of the
downstairs washroom tap was barely coming out. When the
spout was unscrewed, there, in the filter, a few grains of
sand had worked their way through the line, and had almost
obliterated the ability of the little filter. A couple of
days following that, the spout on the upstairs tap had to be
removed and cleaned as well. A few grains of sand and some
tiny pebbles had worked their way up into that tap's filter
as well, and had to be removed so that the water could flow
freely once more.
We can take a lesson from the grains of sand. We must ever
be mindful of the line of communication linking us and God.
It is easy to become complacent when our lives seem to be
flowing fine. But that's when little bits of grit can begin
to slip in, grit as innocuous as laxity in our language, our
manners, and the things we choose to read, see and hear, or
grit such as a slackening off in giving God our daily
thanks. Sometimes it takes someone else to tell us that
something is wrong. When we take a look at the root of the
problem, we can clean it up, and lay a firm foundation to
keep the lines open in our relationship with Him.
Prayer: May we always make it our priority, Father, to keep
our prayer lines, our private-time lines, our
special-ways-of-communication lines open to You. In Jesus'
name we pray. Amen.
Mary Daniel
mdaniel@islandnet.com Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
Thanks to http://daily.presbycan.ca