Books Galore

After our bathroom leak, these are all the books from the room below that got wet in the 'flood'! Fortunately the water missed the large majority of our books and we got those dry ones off the shelves in time.

It is now over two weeks since the episode of the escaping water and only a few of the wettest, most sodden books are still a little damp in the middle. The rest of them have dried. Mind you, some of them have gone so crinkly and expanded I'm not sure whether they are still usable.

Fortunately the dehumidifier works away by itself, blowing dry air across the wall. The books, wall, and ceiling, dry by themselves, without anyone needing to attend to them.

Round about our regular week-day work, we've been busy trying to figure out where we're going to go next. My training placement finishes at the end of November and we still have no clear idea about where God is calling us to go.

Certainly we will be going, at some point, for I'll have to live in the manse of whichever parish I end up in. Liz is determined she's not going to be left behind, and I'm glad about that!

Last weekend we went to visit some possible places. In those four days we travelled 800 miles and saw round 18 different church buildings and manses. Although seeing all these places in one trip was an efficient use of time and diesel, it has left our heads rather overwhelmed with images and impressions.

By Friday, only yesterday!, we had made some progress in sorting our the jumble of pictures and places, and were ready to go to Anstruther to spend some time with a minister friend, talking over where we had got to. He was very helpful and together we identified some of the underlying issues that have been making it difficult to find the way forward.

However, we still have a lot of work to do, looking at other places and comparing them with the ones we have already looked at. Sometimes it seems like we are making progress. At other times we seem to be sliding backwards faster than we are stepping forwards!

Last weekend we travelled almost as far as you can and still be on the mainland of Scotland. Below is one of my photos at that famous spot on the North coast, looking North to the Orkney islands. It is rather grey because the sun was setting and it had been raining recently. But you can't take that photo anywhere else!

Holy Bathroom

John's Gospel tells us that there are many rooms in the Father's house, but he doesn't say anything about bathrooms.

We had our bathroom completely renovated a few years after we came here, away back in the early 90s. In recent years, the chipboard units surrounding the sink, and containing the toilet cistern, had succumbed to the condensation and splashes. It was time for a refurb.

We got in touch with a bathroom company, picked some new units, and agreed the job.

I got a surprise on Tuesday morning this week, when two workmen arrived saying, "We're here to replace the three units in the bathroom." Although I had received a phone call the previous week to say that they might come on Tuesday, I had not received confirmation, and hence had assumed they weren't coming. Not so!

They got on well with the job, finishing it in one day, instead of the two days they had thought it might take. As you can see above, the refurbished unit looks very spic and span.

On Thursday morning, when I opened the curtains in the room below the bathroom, I got another surprise. The carpet was wet, the sofa was wet, stains were trickling down the wall behind the seven bookshelves, and the ceiling-paper was bulging and dripping. It was clear that a disaster had occurred in the bathroom up above.

What a commotion ensued. All hands on deck, but there were no pumps to be manned!

We woke up the son who was still sleeping, got the water all turned off, got the other son off to school, cleared out the furniture, TV and other electronics, and emptied the bookshelves. Fortunately only 10% of the 600 books had come into contact with the water trickling down the wall, and only a dozen or so of those were sodden. Hopefully the rest of the wet books will dry out and remain usable.



Later on that morning, the plumbers returned. They took apart the new units and checked out all their piping. No sign of water anywhere. It must be under the floor. But the only screws they had put into the floor were the two screws for the toilet bowl, and they had gone back into the same holes as before. Could it have been one of those screws?

The only way to find up was to lever up the previous floor cutting. Sure enough there was a pipe immediately under the floor boards, in line with the toilet screws, and the ash-fill between the floor and the ceiling below was soaking wet.

Well at least now we knew where the water was coming from. The plumbers disconnected the toilet and cut open the floor underneath. And there was the hole in the pipe.



It's all fixed now, and everything in the bathroom put back the way it was before. Now I can confess that the top photo above was taken after the leak had been fixed, and not beforehand! It still looks spic and span, but underneath the floor, not everything is as it should be. It's still soaking wet, and probably will be for some time yet.

It all looks wonderful on the outside, but inside it's another story. In fact, that's what the problem was on Tuesday afternoon. It all looked great, but under the floor the water was squirting out of the hole.

When the toilet had first been screwed in over 15 years ago, it had penetrated the pipe, and made a water-tight seal. But once the screw was taken out, and put back in again, the seal had been lost, and the water started squirting out.

So many of us are like that. Everything looks fine on the outside, but inside things are not as they should be. Maybe we are suffering from a physical illness that doesn't show on the outside. But I think many more folk are concealing spiritual disorders that are far worse than any physical disease.

After all, a physical illness can only cause pain, disability, or even death.

But if we have a spiritual disorder then it can separate us from God.

God wants you to be with Him, to be a part of his family, to live with him, in his house, for ever.

Don't let that hidden condition keep you from your destiny. Let Jesus the healer, touch you with his healing hand, and set you to rights.

Jesus knows who you really are, the hidden you, deep inside, that no-one else knows about. Jesus is the healer, he paid the price, he has the cure. He can set you free. Just ask him now.

Then you'll have the key to your own room, in the Father's house, for ever.