A lesson about community learned at the kitchen sink…

It was a simple job… completely within my plumbing skills, I thought…

Had my wife been home…

Had she heard me talk about my plumbing skills…

She would have said…

“Plumbing skills!?”  What plumbing skills?”

Unfortunately she was not home…

I was the sole audience for my thoughts…

And I considered them brilliant…

Water pressure in the faucet was low…

I could fix something that simple!

In my head, I heard myself answering a question from a caller on a radio “do-it-yourself” show…

“First”, I told the imaginary caller, “unscrew the pull-out faucet from the flexible water supply line…”

Done!

“Next, turn on the water and look at the flow coming directly from the water line.  If it’s weak, you may have a clog in the line!”

I turned on the water…

Disaster!

Unfortunately, I had forgotten a step… the one that says, “Grip the water line firmly and point it into the sink.”

I wasn’t holding the line at all when I turned on the water…

Water shot out of the line, crossed the kitchen and hit the wall on the other side of the room with a splat…

Pushed by the pressure,  the flexible water line danced like a cobra responding to the music of a snake charmer…

Water sprayed in every direction…

I did what any sensible person would do.  I turned off the water.

The water stopped…

The flexible hose retreated back into the faucet…

No problem, I’d just reach into the faucet and pull out the hose.

Without the faucet-head to stop it, the hose had fallen down into the depths of the plumbing, just out of reach.

Easy!  I’d push the hose up from under the sink…

It moved a fraction of an inch, then hit an obstruction…

If only I could reach it from the top and pull it out!

What could I use to reach it?

Pliers?

Too big!

My wife’s tweezers?

Too short!

An hour later I was still trying every tool I could think of….

When my wife walked in.

She looked around the kitchen…

Water everywhere…

The faucet in pieces on the counter…

Her tweezers in the sink…

She smiled.

“Doing a little plumbing?”

Reaching under the kitchen sink, she pushed up on the feeder hose…

As it moved into range, I grabbed it with the tweezers and pulled it past the obstruction…

We fixed the problem in 30 seconds…

A problem I hadn’t been able to fix by myself in over an hour…

Maybe God knew what he was doing when he designed us to live in community…

Two are better than one, because … if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

Maybe it keeps us humble to discover that we need community…

 ^…I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, Romans 12:3

Maybe being faced with our own need for community makes us more willing to offer it to others…

and in that offering, we follow the example of Christ…

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2