Water, Water Everywhere - Curse or Blessing?

September, 2016

May, 2015

We've spent the last four years remodeling our house that we moved into in December, 2014.  Part of that renovation was to enclose a screen porch to house a therapy pool so we could do warm water exercise year 'round. At the time of the incident about which this article is being written, we'd been plodding along on the porch for about seven months, since early May, 2015. After removing part of the decking, we came up with the bright idea to dig down about a foot and bury the pool in the ground a bit so it would be lower to climb into. Our kids helped dig the hole, and then we got information online on how to make a platform on which to set the pool. We had the platform all built (no small feat for us amateurs!), struggled to get the pool inside the now enclosed doorway, got the legs all leveled, and were ready to fill it up. We could just feel that warm water and could envision the end of our project. What we didn't know was that our entire street sits on a very high water table, and yes, I think you can hear the big, "But..." coming!

In God's sovereign plan, we had had an extremely wet end of December that year, and just as we were getting ready to fill our pool with water and start enjoying the reward of our labors (and our kids' labors!), the hole that the pool is in filled with a foot of water and the platform underneath it fell apart! The pool actually began floating in the hole! Oh wow, did our hearts sink! When water stays where it's supposed to, remaining within its boundaries, it's a wonderful thing; but when it gets where it's not supposed to, oh the damage it can do!

I began thinking about how easily good things can become bad due to the curse of sin.  My desire for a nice warm exercise pool was not a bad thing, nor was it a bad desire that our project come to completion. But those good desires became bad desires, when they became ruling desires. I knew that that had happened with me, because I began to sin in my heart and attitudes about the whole situation. Rather than see God's good sovereignty in sending that rain just when He did (allowing the drainage problem to surface before we got the pool all filled) I became fearful, anxious, angry, and discouraged, and took a good deal of that out on my husband. All that worry-energy and people attacking robbed me of the mental clarity in the moment to be able to attack the problem itself and be thankful for God's goodness to us in the situation. My idolatrous desires for comfort and ease, and my unbelief in the goodness, kindness, and sovereignty of the Lord in that moment were revealed.

The Lord used this incident to once again remind me of my need for a daily Savior - one who gives me the power to love Him most, and to esteem others more highly than I esteem myself.  One who helps me overcome and repent of blaming, grumbling, fear, and anger, because I am supremely loved by a God who is above the curse of sin and who is even using the curse to show me my own heart and draw me close to Jesus Christ in dependence and trusting reverence!  Thus, He used the curse to bless me! He was causing all things to work together for my good and His glory by conforming me more to His likeness as I once again had to run to Him for my goodness and perfection in my sinful and imperfect handling of this situation. It took me awhile to be able to rejoice in that trial, but not as long as it would have taken the year before. And for that, I am thankful.

Hebrews 12 is one of my favorite passages of Scripture.  It says in verses 5-13 that it is for discipline that we must endure the trials that God sends - so that we may share His holiness! I'm so glad He also says that all discipline is painful in the moment because I don't know about you, but I want to know that God sees and knows what I'm going through, and that He knows it's hard because I am a weak creature. But I'm also thankful that God redeems those moments of pain in the lives of His children by buying them back and using them for our good and His glory. It's in our moments of pain that we are the most likely to see what's inside our hearts and see our need for Jesus Christ's perfect life and sacrificial death, and the resurrection power of a new heart to repent and change our responses in trials. That is what Hebrews 12:11 means when it says that the discipline of the Lord produces "the peaceable fruit of righteousness" in us when we're trained by it. Fortified by this gospel message of hope, and empowered by God's grace, we are then commanded to pick up our weak and drooping hands and feet (telling us we will have fears and troubles, but we don't have to live as victims) and proceed in our life in a way that is pleasing to the Lord. This means we will attack problems rather than people; and we will love the Lord our God more and others more, and love our own selves less.

I had to remind myself of who God is in Scripture, and remind myself once again that He had already provided a way of escape through Jesus Christ from my very worst fate - eternal separation from Him forever.  And because I had been given that gift of His grace, He was also giving me grace to grow in seeing my need for the perfect record of Jesus Christ in my place more every day, using the very trials that He sovereignly brought to reveal my need. Thus, I grew in trusting that God only ever chooses the trials He knows we need and in essence, they are hand-picked and delivered to the door of my life at just the time I need them.

The Lord has sent many more trials my way since then, and I am growing in believing that the gospel of God's grace always brings blessing out of the curse, and is accomplishing God's redemption of His purchased possessions, using every hard circumstance for His glory. Someday, maybe very soon, there will be no more toil and labor, only joy filled working in the Kingdom of God for every believer in the Savior Jesus Christ. No more water where it shouldn't be - only a River of Water of Life flowing out from the Lamb!  I do look forward to that day, when sin in me and around me will be forever eradicated, and in its place will only be eternal perfection, joy and gladness in the presence of the Lamb!

It's hard to believe that we've been using our warm water pool now for over two years! The toil of having to remove the pool, dig a trench, fill it with stone, install a sump pump, re-install the pool, fill it, dump it, fill it, dump it, and fill it again - is almost a distant memory (well, maybe not so distant for Dave who had to do most of the heavy work!) But the enjoyment of that warm water makes all the hard work worth it (at least as much as it can be worth it in this life). To a much larger degree that is what 2 Cor. 4:16-18 is saying: "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

(For more study and reflection, please read 2 Cor. 4:14-18,  Rev. 2:6-7, Rev. 22:1-7, Heb. 12)