F is for FAUCET

You knew that our first house was cold when you knocked on the door in the middle of winter and you could see the breath of the person standing inside when they opened the door. Still, we were young sometimes you can be more accepting of things than later in life and heat is certainly one of them. I used to wonder why mum kept the heat so high in our kitchen as dad reached old age and always seemed to be feeling cold while everyone else in the room was sweating profusely. Now I’m beginning to understand that heat brings with it a certain amount of mental comfort.

That first house was heated by electricity with one large radiator in each of the rooms but only turned on in the places where we needed to have heat. So several rooms remained ice cold for most of the winter and weren’t much warmer in the summer since the house was mostly shaded by trees throughout the year. In the rooms that did manage to creep above freezing, the radiators, that were filled with huge concrete blocks usually were set to come on at off peak hours and then the job of the blocks was to retain the heat for hours afterwards. The system worked quite well, especially in the smaller rooms, which remained comfortably warm throughout the day but the larger rooms usually had their cold spots if you moved too far away from the radiator. So it was possible, within the confines of a few yards, to go from tropical to temperate to Antarctic conditions, though the scenery didn’t actually change all that much.

But the greatest problem was the faucet in the bath that you probably know better as a normal water tap. The bathroom was on the second floor but the overhead tank that held the water was not in the attic but outside, perched at the top of one wall on a metal structure that allowed the water therein to flow by gravity into the necessary places. However, due to the lack of a cover on the tank, anything that happened to fall into it from the sky could also flow by gravity into unwanted places, so, often, bits of leaves, small pieces of gravel, creep crawlies, slivers of wood and other objects that couldn’t actually be recognised, could easily make their way from the tank to the bathroom. Now I don’t mind a rubber duck or a sponge sharing my bath but when certain unidentified flowing objects are circulating around your body, it’s time to take action.

Several solutions were considered, including erecting some sort of canopy or cover over the tank, draining all the water out of the tank and allowing it to refill, though this was obviously only going to be a temporary measure, or even disconnecting the tank and replacing it with a new one in the attic. All these measures would have brought varying degrees of success to the situation but as it was rented accommodation and the landlord didn’t seem too interested in spending a lot of money and us poor newlyweds weren’t able to, even if we had been interested, another answer had to be found. Anyway, we didn’t intend spending our whole lives in the same establishment. And of course, to all difficult problems, there is always a solution if you think hard enough.

Socks! Socks? Yes, socks. An ordinary solution to an extraordinary problem. After considering all the options, the cheapest and indeed most effective short term measure was to get a pair of old socks and tie them over the end of the two faucets in the bath. Then when all the junk made its way down along with the water from the tank, there was a shock at one end when everything that shouldn’t have been in the bath but expected to get there, became trapped by an old sock. So for many months we had clean baths, though one had to be careful to remove them any time when visitors came to the house and needed to use the bathroom. Still, it was nice to know that the solution was only every a foot away!

And isn't it true that sometimes when we hit a problem in life we look for all sorts of complicated solutions when the answer is right before us all the time. We look to gurus, to meditation, to drugs, to psychoanalysts, to alternate religions, to humanism, to new age, to astrology, to group therapy, to this expert and that profssional, to pilgrimages, to self harm, to rehab clinics, indeed to anything but God. Then sometimes as a last resort, we turn to Him, in some sort of desperation, when everything else has failed and almsot to our surprise, we discover that He has ahd the answer to all along. And doesn't Paul tell us in his writings to the Philippians that 'And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.' And don't you rememberthat old Andrae Crouch song, 'Jesus is the answer for the world today' and especially that line which said 'And everything that He's promised, I tell you he would do it for you.' We need no other confidence than that which He gives us for the Psalmist writes 'You have been my hope, O Sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth.' Are you worried, troubled, in need of help. Find the answer in Jesus, for out of him flows living water.