1 Kings 4:29 – And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore. (KJV)

As I was away most of the fall doing “grandma duty”, there wasn’t much water consumption at my home. And so it was quite a shock to receive a water bill that was hundreds of dollars and gallons beyond our normal usage. The city sent us a notice saying that, due to the excessive amount, there must be a water leak somewhere.

There was no loss of water pressure that would have indicated a problem, and Christmas, New Year, a snowfall, and a cold snap made for delays in discovering where the leak originated.

However, the day came when the water was turned off, and the yard dug up. And there, deep down close to the house, a well of water was springing from where the line had been cracked ever so gently by the pressure of rocks and roots. It was also discovered that the line had not originally been laid upon a bed of sand, so they trucked in some sand for a secure bed, laid the new line, turned the water back on, and voila! Everything worked just fine.

A few days later, however, the water in the spout of the downstairs washroom tap was barely coming out. When the spout was unscrewed, there, in the filter, a few grains of sand had worked their way through the line, and had almost obliterated the ability of the little filter. A couple of days following that, the spout on the upstairs tap had to be removed and cleaned as well. A few grains of sand and some tiny pebbles had worked their way up into that tap’s filter as well, and had to be removed so that the water could flow freely once more.

We can take a lesson from the grains of sand. We must ever be mindful of the line of communication linking us and God. It is easy to become complacent when our lives seem to be flowing fine. But that’s when little bits of grit can begin to slip in, grit as innocuous as laxity in our language, our manners, and the things we choose to read, see and hear, or grit such as a slackening off in giving God our daily thanks. Sometimes it takes someone else to tell us that something is wrong. When we take a look at the root of the problem, we can clean it up, and lay a firm foundation to keep the lines open in our relationship with Him.

Prayer: May we always make it our priority, Father, to keep our prayer lines, our private-time lines, our special-ways-of-communication lines open to You. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Mary Daniel mdaniel@islandnet.com Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada

Thanks to http://daily.presbycan.ca