Daily Verse | 1 Chronicles 29:9
The people rejoiced at the willing response of their leaders, for they had given freely and wholeheartedly to the Lord.

Thursday’s Reading: 2 Chronicles 1-5

Happy Thursday. More of a personal reflection this morning.

On Tuesday evening we experienced the scourge of households everywhere when one of our sump pumps stopped working and began to flood the basement. April showers and all that. Fortunately, my wife had gone into the back room for something and discovered the unfolding disaster, preventing it from going any further — although it was already pretty bad since the smell of sewer water was already wafting through the air.

We started bailing by getting the shop vac and filling that, dipping buckets into it when it was full, walking them up the stairs and down the hall to the front door, then throwing them out into the lawn. Rather smelly business.

The irony is that a friend had asked if I wanted to spend some time praying for an hour or so. I had nothing on the schedule, and it was during that time that the springs burst. Fortunately — or was it Providentially? — he had grown up fixing sump pumps in properties his father owned and knew exactly what to do. As for me, I had replaced a sump pump one time about 10 years ago, so I wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence and experience.

If it hadn’t been for his presence, I wouldn’t have gotten to bed by 1:00 a.m. I would have been trying to figure out what I needed and how to fit the pipes together. As it turned out, I had all the necessary tools (90 percent of any solution), but I didn’t have the know-how. He did.

In addition, while my friend and I were out getting a new pump and all the fittings around 9:45 PM, some neighbors showed up to help. They came with buckets, a pump to get the water out, and a willingness to do whatever we needed.

As it turned out, there wasn’t much for them to do, but the fact that they showed up that late in the evening (they all have day jobs, too) to lend a hand was more of an encouragement to me than if they dug a trench from my basement to Lake Michigan. That’s something that I think is missing in neighborhoods these days — a true sense of community. We’re working to build that here, with Christ at the center of it.

Anyway, by the time we had installed the new pump, cleaned up the little water remaining, mopped the basement floor, started a load of towels, cleaned the buckets and put all the tools away, it was after mid-night. It was a little late to start a blog post, so I bailed again (see what I did there?) and decided to get some sleep.

As I climbed into bed and pulled the covers up around 1:00 AM, I thanked God for the remarkable “coincidence” that a friend had reached out to me to pray, had driven to my house and, as we were praying for each other and our families, I was given (yes, “given”) an urgent hardship — and he was there to help us manage the exact problem we faced in that moment.

“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”
— Philippians 4:19

And that’s how God sometimes works.