Month: November 2012

Home to Roost

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

The plumber glanced up from his prone position under the sink.  “I’ll have this done in a minute.  Oh, and I got that other problem fixed for you!”  The tub upstairs had been draining painfully slowly, so we had asked him to auger it out, while he was installing our new downstairs plumbing.  “There was something solid in the line, but I shoved it on down.  I don’t think it went out completely, but hopefully, you’ll never have another problem.”  That was over ten years ago.

I thought about the plumber’s comment two years ago, just for a moment, when the upstairs sink refused to drain anymore.  Drain cleaners did not good, so I eventually got a light duty plumber’s snake and shoved it down the line until it hit something solid.  After a good bit of grunting and shoving, it moved on down the line beyond my reach.  The sink drain worked as good as new.  There was a thought in the back of my mind then…”You don’t suppose the plumber didn’t take care of the problem permanently?”  But, everything was working just fine, so I put it out of my thoughts.

A couple of days ago, the downstairs toilet refused to flush and all that my efforts with the plumber’s helper did was to force the dirty water up into the bathtub.  I cast about for an answer and found it when I ran a borrowed heavy-duty plumber’s snake down the vent stack on the roof of the house.  It went down for many feet and then hit something solid.  The thought from a couple of years ago is now screaming in my head.  It has to be!  This is the same something solid which troubled the plumber over ten years ago.  It has never been removed at all, just shoved on down the line to cause problems at some different place and at a different time.

“The chickens have come home to roost.”  I hear another of Mom’s favorite sayings in my head, along with the accusatory thoughts.  I never really considered the picture, but I can’t avoid it tonight.  The idea is that evil deeds (or even careless ones) which are done will invariably come back to haunt us.  In my fertile imagination I see a hard man, knowing that it is the reason they have raised them, demanding that his wife kill the chickens for supper while he is out working that day.  The tender-hearted woman can’t bring herself to do the distasteful deed, so as soon as he is gone, she shoos the squawking birds out into the woods.  Knowing that her husband will expect chicken for supper, she acquires some from the meat market and prepares them.  Unfortunately, while the man is enjoying his meal that evening, he first hears and then sees the parade of the hens as they head for their accustomed roosting spot in the chicken coop.  The lie is evident and can no longer be hidden beneath the web of deceit. The chickens have come home to roost.

So it is with my plumbing problem.  Each time the issue has been addressed, it has been dealt with in a haphazard way, not at all intending to complete the task, but simply to achieve the desired result.  Clogged drain?  Make it work.  Will there be problems later?  Oh well.  Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.  We’ll deal with it if it comes up again.

It doesn’t make sense, does it?  The car leaks oil, so we buy more oil and pour it in.  But the problem is not that the engine didn’t have enough oil in it; the problem is that there is a seal leaking.  Pouring more oil in will temporarily keep us driving down the road, but the only thing that will permanently resolve the real issue is to repair the seal.  In the same way, if you look around, you will see evidence of an amazing array of half measures with which we “solve” our problems (buckets under leaky faucets, tape on glasses, etc.), all the while knowing that we haven’t solved anything, but have simply put off addressing the issue.

You will, no doubt, have realized by now that I am not actually worried about leaky engines, or faucets, or even clogged sewers, and certainly not poultry returning home for the night.  Our lives give evidence of so many areas in which we have merely given a “lick and a promise”, but have never fulfilled that promise.  Don’t you think it’s time that we actually solve some problems and set things right?  Perhaps we should start by learning which are symptoms and which are causes.  Yelling at your kids?  That’s a symptom.  Lying to your wife?  That’s a symptom.  Gossiping about your friends?  You got it…a symptom.  If all we do is to shove the problems down the pipe a little way, they will certainly show themselves in a different place again, and soon.  It’s time for us to deal with the heart of the issues. Funny. That’s exactly where most of these problems are to be found–in our hearts.

I like a verse I found recently in Ezekiel, where God says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.”  Better than that, He says that He will remove the something solid that we have been pushing around in an attempt to fix it ourselves.  “I will remove your heart of stone…”  No more shoving and working to fix symptoms.  No more hoping that the issue will not show up again.  What should have been done in the first place is accomplished.  See!  All things have become new.

Oh, in case you wondered, I’m pretty sure that I’ll have to use the plumber’s snake at my house again sometime.  I just shoved the something solid a little way further down the pipe, so the bathroom fixtures would drain.  Time will tell.

Chances are, the chickens will be home to roost again soon.  I can hardly wait.

“For all that is secret will eventually be brought into the open, and everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all.”
(Luke 8:17~NLT)





© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2012. All Rights Reserved.

Finding the Pearl

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

“If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.”  The sales representative and I were shooting the breeze about the music business, late this afternoon.  I agreed, a little more quickly than I intended to.  We commiserated awhile about the difficulties of our chosen field; he wrote a small order for me and then he was gone.  He wasn’t the first to voice a similar sentiment today.
The middle aged couple were looking for a few accessories, but as is common, had spent some time in browsing.  When I asked if the few items they selected was the extent of what they needed today, the gentleman responded with, “No, I need a lot more, but I just can’t afford it.”  When I offered, tongue in cheek, to accompany them to the bank to acquire a loan so they could purchase the entire music store, the fellow retorted, just as tongue in cheek, “No thanks!  There’s no money to be made in the music business!”  I responded, again a little too quickly, “You’re not telling me anything I haven’t known for the last thirty years!”
“If it was easy…”   A few months ago, the Lovely Lady and I stood in the middle of a plowed field that stretched for many acres in all directions.  Standing expectantly under the scorching sun, we held an assortment of trowels in our hands and I carried a small cloth bag.   Along with a number of other folks, we wandered along the furrows with their clods of dirt strewn hither and yon until we found a likely looking piece of ground and began to attempt to reap the crop which this field was famous for growing.
We were in the famous Crater of Diamonds diamond mine in central Arkansas.  It wasn’t at all what I expected.  It was, quite literally, a field.  The report that diamonds are lying on the ground waiting to be picked up was greatly exaggerated.  Oh, I don’t dispute the fact that some people have found diamonds there, even valuable ones.  But, they were the exception, not the rule.  We found nothing worth mentioning, except some sunburn and a lot of dirt.  “If it was easy…”
I almost felt a kinship with the participants of the gold rushes of the nineteenth century.  Driven by reports of gold just lying around, waiting to be picked up, thousands sold everything they had and went west in the late 1840s.  The only people who got rich were the very lucky and the merchants who sold the foolish treasure seekers the necessities for living…until their money ran out.  It wasn’t much different with the Klondike gold rush at the end of that same century.  One hundred thousand people headed for certain riches.  Only thirty thousand of them arrived.  Of that number, less than ten percent found gold.  “If it was easy…”
We want things to be easy.  We watch skilled craftsmen who make their jobs appear effortless and think, “I could do that!”  We view sports events and see the apparent ease with which the athletes achieve their goals and believe that it comes naturally to them.  I have sat in numberless auditoriums and marveled at the incredible talent of the musicians, imagining that with the right breaks, it could have been me up on that stage.  What we don’t see, and certainly wouldn’t desire to endure, are the endless hours of effort and the incredible self-discipline which these “prodigies” invest in their craft.  They work at being the best, day after day, week after week, year after year, just so that we can admire the results, all the while believing that all it takes is the right break, knowing the right people, or being in the right place at the right time.  What a joke!  “If it was easy…”
Hard work pays off.  It’s just that sometimes you have to sift through a ton of dirt to get to the diamond.  If you have a dream, you won’t reach it simply by starting on the path to it.  You have to persevere.  You have to work through the hardships, the ineptness of inexperience, sometimes even the discouragement of people who say it can’t be done.  The accountant who told me to stay out of the music business because the “numbers don’t add up” didn’t have the dream to follow.  Even today, the numbers don’t add up sometimes, but I’m still following that dream. 
Last summer, as the Lovely Lady and I drove up the highway, away from the diamond field, I was amused to see the signs advertising the crystal mines nearby.  Their boast was that every customer was guaranteed to find crystals, an obvious swipe at the disappointing diamond mine we had just left.  Well, sure.  It’s not hard to settle for a shiny crystal.  You have to work, and dare, and sweat for the diamonds. “If it was easy…”
Whether you want to achieve some great physical task, or are pursuing some lofty humanitarian goal, or even seeking to reach an honorable spiritual ambition, you’ll never attain it if you don’t give everything you have for it.  Anyone can do an average task.  That’s why they call it average.
“If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.”
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant on the lookout for choice pearls.  When he discovered a pearl of great value, he sold everything he owned and bought it.”
(Matthew 13:45,46~NLT)
” Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life.  I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
(Theodore Roosevelt~26th President of the United States~1858-1919)
© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2012. All Rights Reserved.