It’s winter time again in China!
As usual, a lot of things inside our flat will change with the season. All warm clothes are out of the cabinet. Thick quilts and comforters are pulled-out from their boxes. Fan heater is on stand-by mode. And water heater is activated.
However, our water heater has a leak so I tried to device some ways to remedy it.
Remedy No.1: I put a pail under the leak! (This is the classic easy but lazy solution that I thought of. My bad)
Result: The pail easily gets full and I must pour it empty once too often
Remedy No.2: I tried to stop the leak by tying a cloth and plastic wrap around it. (My alternative choice in the absence of an elastic rubber band)
Result: The leak breaks into smaller water spurts that my pail can not even catch. The walls and floors became wet.
Remedy No. 3: I just tried to close the water valve after every use.
Result: Several times we were ready to take our shower and realized that the water valve was still closed so we had to open it again. It's an inconvenient way of losing time.
And so, after several days of watching in silent amazement at my "creative" ideas to solve this problem, my ever-forebearing and loving wife ( Thank God for her ) requested me to call the flat owner. Immediately he came, removed the defective valve and changed it with a brand new one – problem totally solved in a half hour.
Advent season has arrived.
It is 4 weeks of pre-Christmas spiritual preparation for the coming birth of our Lord.
Or in a more layman’s term – it’s fixing time!
Our brokenness.
Our weakness.
Our failings, our faults, our flaws.
Our sinfulness.
Actually, like the broken water valve, we can also find several excuses to dodge the inevitable fixing.
We can deny (“I am fine.”)
We can procrastinate (“I will do this some other time.”)
We can give-up (“I am not forgivable.”)
But the plain truths remain – everybody commits sin, nobody knows what will happen tomorrow and everyone is “fixable”.
We need repentance.
We need confession.
We need to do it now.
We need to call upon Him into our lives and let Him fix our lives, once again, for the nth time.
Be assured that He doesn’t mind doing this, no matter what apprehensions we have, because He only has unconditional love for each one of us.
As one robot character in an animation movie for kids said, “Why be you when you can be new?”. This year’s Advent season is now calling us, inviting us to be “new” in God’s eyes.
May we all have new and refreshed hearts come Christmas time.
God bless.
