“What is this brown water?!” I said aloud when I opened the washing machine and saw suds floating on chocolate-y looking water. I had just placed a load of whites in there and was checking to see if the new detergent seemed sufficient. Then I remembered that there were some dish towels in the bottom of the washer that Howard had tossed in there earlier. What was on them? Had he spilled coffee and mopped it up with the towels? No doubt, that was it, I fumed.
“What was on the dish towels you put in the washer?” I demanded, calling him at work. “Something has turned the water brown!” I didn’t get an answer, as he had a customer and would call me back. I spun out the offending water and went to wash the sink full of dishes. I had put off these chores until now, because this morning we had been dismantling the kitchen and out buying paint in preparation for having it painted tomorrow. I turned on the tap, squirting in dishwashing liquid and turned to retrieve a pan from the stove. When I looked again, the sink was filled with brown water! Uh-oh, it wasn’t Howard’s fault. The city must be working on the lines.
Sure enough, when I called the water department, the mystery was solved. I was informed the fire department was to blame, having been “stirring things up over there.” “When people get home this afternoon and start using water, it’ll clear up,” I was told assuredly. Well, I was home now! What about me? Kind of made me think of the old adage, “Don’t put off ’til tomorrow what you can do today,” (or dishes ’til this afternoon)!
The Bible forbids boasting about tomorrow in James 4:13-14, when it says, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell and make a profit’; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.” The next verse admonishes us to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.”
That truth about our life being a vapor is more real every day. Just yesterday we learned of the passing of yet another friend we’d had in Mississippi. He was a contemporary; our kids played together, we had shared with them a joint venture in establishing a church there, our daughters were roommates when they first went off to college. It hardly seems possible that he could be gone. But just as God breathed the breath of life into man, when that breath is gone, so are we, like a vapor.
The kitchen was supposed to be painted last week, but we had put it off, taking a chance that the weather would still be suitable this week. So, as Paul said when he was bidding goodbye to his friends in Ephesus, “…I will return again to you, God willing,” Acts 18:21, I am saying, “God willing, we will get the kitchen painted tomorrow.” And hopefully we will have clean dishes and laundry to put away!
No comments:
Post a Comment