Praising the Mighty Deeds of God!

Psalm 106:1-2

Praise the LORD! Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever!

Who can utter the mighty deeds of the LORD,
or declare all his praise?

This verse echoes in my heart and mind as I recall the events of the past two months that culminated today. Some of you have been tracking with Amy and me over the last several weeks in relation to some of our home issues; other haven’t, so I’ll recount the story.

Even before December, 2007 had been a difficult year for us financially. The big blow was this summer when we spent close to $13 thousand dollars to replace a defunct heating/AC unit at our house. While this is a considerable expense for anyone, this number is around 20% of our annual income. God was good to us (as he always is) and we moved into the fall trusting God, but yet still struggling with that trust because of some additional financial pressure.

Then early in December things got interesting. The first thing was that our water line into our house rusted out and began to leak profusely, creating puddles of water in our front yard. Replacing the water line into your house from the water company feed is not inexpensive ($1,000 and up), but it needed to be done; and it was. Then, we had some serious car issues that ran over $500 to get fixed. Again, something we felt needed to be done; and it was.

Then the floodgates went from a trickle to a flood. On Christmas day afternoon our sewer line backed up. This wasn’t a new experience for us; it had happened before, typically ever other year or so. We were able to manage until the next day where we spent another couple hundred dollars to get it unplugged. The technician told us that we had deeper problems though. He even broke the bit head on his equipment trying to unplug our really nasty problem. He recommended even more work to be done and left.

One week later on New Year’s Day, the sewer backed up again. This time the problem wasn’t going away. A technician from one company came out and told us we had a broken sewer line and it would be $3 to $4 thousand to fix. Since he did not fix the clog, we had another technician come out, unclog us temporarily and promise to do some research to see what it would take for them to fix our problem permanently.

Since that day, the $3 thousand has been hanging over a head like a dark cloud. While we wanted to trust God, we were feeling that this additional debt opportunity was like the final straw on the camel’s back. How could we possibly continue to survive with all these financial burdens we have encountered this year?

This cloud has been over our head for several weeks now. I have been pursuing solutions but things just seemed to continue to drag on. Well today, I received a call from the 2^nd technician. I thought he was following up to the message I left yesterday, but instead he was asking to come use our home to test some new equipment his company was considering at no expense to us. This new equipment, if successful, would solve our problem and eliminate the need for the $3 or $4 thousand dollar repair. Well guess what I said? Now a couple hours later, I sit at this terminal typing; the demo equipment did its job! The sewer pipes running from my house are completely clean and a solution for our problem has been found! No new sewer line, no dug-up road, no 3-4 thousand dollars! Even better, though (or worse depending on your perspective) this technician told me that if this process had not worked, that my cost for his company to make all the needed repairs was in the range of $13 thousand dollars! My jaw hit the ground! I’m not sure how this other company could say $3-4 thousand but obviously I was looking at a much bigger problem than I even knew!

There are several subtle points throughout this story where the cords of God’s weaving in the tapestry of our life’s situation stick out. Let me just share one with you. When talking to the technician today and thanking him for being a tool of God’s blessing in our lives, he mentioned that he thought of us when planning this demo because he was aware of the situation with our AC/heating unit. How would he have known about that? Well the previous week when he was out here pricing the job, my wife had asked him to check on an incoming water leak that we might possibly have. Why did that come up? Because earlier in that same day, the water meter man had stopped by our house and mentioned to her that our meter seemed to show a small leak in our house somewhere. Well, we’ve become extremely sensitive about incoming water leakage and my normally timid wife felt emboldened enough to approach this strange technician.

Why would that affect him knowing about our AC unit? Well, because he wandered over to the side of our house to check some water connections, he couldn’t help but see our shiny, new unit put in this summer. He asked about it and thus heard the story of what has been going on in our lives. Little did we know then, that this would be an impetus to help him select us for this equipment demo that would save us thousands of dollars. Oh, by the way, the slow water leak is just a leaky faucet in the backyard, one of those Saturday projects for me in the coming weeks.

I share a wonderful story like this for several reasons; one, to give God His rightful glory for His work in our lives. You see, God hasn’t stopped working now that this problem is “over.” God continues to work in our lives both through the good times and bad, both through the easy and the rough. It is just that there are times that His work is more visible, more spectacular, easier to see and to point to for those who don’t normally look for God working in and through our lives. So stop now. Thank God for what He is doing in your life. If you don’t see it, thank Him anyway, because He is at work in your life. But along with thanking Him, also ask Him to make your heart more receptive to what that work just may be.

Thanks for reading. Praise God!