Reflector on a Stick

On the dirt/gravel road that winds in the country toward our house and not much else, there are small sticks with round reflectors on top spaced out in a seemingly random scattered pattern. I see them everyday as I drive in and out of our driveway, and down the road to civilization.

I realized a bit of the importance of these sticks when driving home on a moonless night. It is quite dark out where we are. I might even say it is pitch black. I know the curves in the road, but the car lights reflecting on the round reflectors on the sticks, lit up the reflectors like a runway making the edges of the road much easier to see. It was very helpful.

Then, I had an evening following a big snow. The plows could not keep up with the snow (especially on our road-- since we are not exactly high priority). The reflectors had been nice in the darkness, but they now became critical to my ability to stay on the road. I could tell now why they were placed where they were. They were on curves, in spots with pretty good sized ditches on the sides of the road, and of course on our fence posts on either side of our driveway. The placement was NOT random-- it was strategic. I relied totally on those sticks with reflectors to get home. The road and landscape was unrecognizable, and I would have had no idea where the road even was without them.

There was one odd thing as I drove, however. I was focusing on the lights when I saw a random light out of the grouping. My brain tried to figure out quickly where the road was going. It turns out that it was a reflector on a electrical pole quite a ways off of the road. Who would do that?!? If the others hadn't been in the right spots, I would've followed that reflector and ended up in the snow-filled ditch and on into a field.

Those silly reflectors had gone from curious, to nice, to necessary for survival. It makes me think of how I handle the truths from the Bible. They are sometimes fine to look at and to think about, and sometimes they are downright helpful like the reflectors in the dark. But, their real purpose in revealed when we are in crisis. When our own faculties and ways to figure out the road are blurred by the storms around us, we have to rely on them for our very survival. Along the way, there may also be random other things that look like the truth that distract us and can easily get us off course.

I have come to love those reflectors and have an appreciation I never had in the summer and fall. In the winter cold and storms, they became precious. I hope I will do the same with the living and active Word of God. It is vital and I often discount that in my day to day journey on the road of life when things are moving along fine. May I rely on the truths of the Bible in the times of ease just as much as in the times of blinding storms.

Hebrews 12:2 "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

"I never thought I'd live to see the day!"- Clean water!

I find myself often using one of my favorite sayings of my late paternal grandma: "I never thought I'd live to see the day!". It applies to many, many things in our lives, but this past week I used it in the context of water.

We have had water challenges over the past ten months. We have been searching for a solution to the problem and in the meantime have been having a water truck come in weekly and put city water into our cistern.

There is a man in Pueblo who thought he could fix our water. We were skeptical, but his approach was different than the others. We took a leap of faith and agreed for him to do the work. Amazingly, after a sediment filter, a peroxide filter, settling time in the cistern, two carbon filters, and a water softener, our water is colorless and odorless in the house--- amazing. We have a reverse osmosis filter also in the kitchen for drinking water and for the refrigerator and ice maker.

Harland immediately changed the shower head from the low-flow one back to the monster massaging one we had bought before we knew anything. We have been taking admittedly longer than necessary hot showers in the past week. AAAAHHHH!

Now the filters and the system requires maintenance, and the upkeep will have cost, but the ability to use our own well water is fantastic.

Our water filter man, Mark, has been back several times already to tweak the system. The well water was bad at first, but since we haven't used the well much at all since we moved in, the water got worse as the "real" well water came out. It is black and smells horrible from a myriad of minerals and crud. He tweaked, and we are amazed.

We were up Sunday morning getting ready for church, when Harland happened to go to the basement. He was just in time to see the beginnings of water and mud coming into the basement from our dirt crawl space tunnel. He turned the water off from the well and ran outside to check the cistern. The float sensor that tells the system to stop letting water into the cistern because it is full, had not worked and the cistern was full to the top and the excess was running out (kind of like a bathtub overflow drain) onto the freshly dug dirt above the crawl space. SO.... all of the 200 or so excess gallons of water in the cistern were headed for the dirt tunnel and the basement.

It was about 16 degrees outside, so we bundled up and Harland hurried to ciphon it out with a hose. All of our hoses were frozen and of no help---(good lesson on hoses). The next idea would be a small pump-- except that we don't have one---(we will have one soon, by the way). We were down to the only option we knew. We gathered buckets, and he and I bailed out the water one bucket at a time.

It felt like we were on the Biggest Loser in a challenge. We began squatting down and reaching a bucket into the cistern and filling it with water, hoisting it out, and running it out into the yard and emptying it. We tried to spread the water around in different spots so we wouldn't flood the yard. We decided to see it as a nice irrigation plan and one mean workout. Bucket after bucket we lowered the water level. Harland used a giant bucket and I used a little one. Either way, I assure you that the water got heavier with every load.

An hour and 10 minutes later, the level was well below the float, and the water had stopped flowing out. Harland had sweat drops frozen on his face and in his sideburns. We went down to the basement and collapsed onto the rug (which thankfully was spared the mud/water) and just breathed a sigh of relief and had a good laugh. We were sure that there was a Sunday school lesson in it somewhere since we had missed all of Sunday school and were likely to be late to church. Our cup runneth over!

It is a work in progress, and Mark is still tweaking the system, but I can say with confidence that "I never thought I'd live to see the day!". And I can also say that some hard physical work together with your spouse early on a beautiful Sunday morning can be a real unexpected treat.

Romans 15:13 "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."