Blog
Mar
10
A Water Heater and a Toothless Guy
This past week has been a whirl wind for me. I was trying to get some headway on Jon & Ashley’s tile floor when the dam broke on my cell phone and I kept getting call after call yammering for my attention. Yes I believe yammering is a word but don’t hold me to it. One of those calls was a realtor that I do business with who needed a water heater repaired on Friday morning for a closing at noon. So I was there looking at it at 9 in the morning. There aren’t that much to them so I told him two new elements and thermostats should do the thing.
I take off for my house to pick up a garden hose and then to Home Depot for the parts. Oh by the way I am in a hurry, because I wanted to get to Jon and Ashley’s and I also had a mattress store door to repair that had been broken into. So I get back and start draining the darn thing. After a few minutes I start unscrewing the top element thinking it has drained past that point. Wrong!!! Water starts gushing out all over me & the floor. I scramble to get it back in and discover that its not draining. After straightening the hose out some it starts to drain and I realize this could take longer that I thought. So I settle myself down and make a few telephone calls while I wait. It’s drained, I replace all the parts - 2 new elements and there thermostats and then check it with the volt meter. I am getting voltage on the top elemnet but nothing on the bottom. I start to panic… what if I can’t get this thing working like I told every one??? What am I going to do???
My mind races. Call John Jacob… he’s a heating and air guy he’ll know what to do. His answer: I usually call you with these types of things. Great!! This goes to show that I’m no help. Then finally I stop and ask God what should I do. In my gut His Spirit said go out the front door and ask the neighbor with the white service van for advice now. As I ran out the front door and through the front gate as a scraggy, toothless older man with glasses from the seventies is stepping into his van and closing the door.
I yelled “Hey, wait!” He opened the door and stepped out and I thought what have I done. Can he really help me out? Does this guy know anything, especially about water heaters? I asked him if he knew anything about plumbing and he said he did. I had a feeling of relief and disbelief all at the same time. He said let me tell you a little bit about water heaters. And he proceeded to give me a rudimentary understanding on how they worked. Basically only one element works at a time and you don’t necessarily hear popping and cracking as you hear one heat up. He said that I should have hot water in about ten minutes. I looked over my shoulder to see the new home owner: a grand daughter flanked by her mother and grandmother scoping out the new place. I thought this old guy with the seventies glasses, no front teeth and a beard he stole from Santa Claus better be right, or I have a heap of explaining to do.
I go and introduce myself all the while apologizing for the damp kitchen floor and garden hose running through their new house and praying that this guy is right. I go to the kitchen faucet and turn the hot water: toasty warm! YES!
A few things I learned again:
- don’t get impatient, God always works them out
- don’t ever let fear get the best of you
- don’t ever look at the outside of a person and judge them for who they are
God continues to amaze me at the beauty, wisdom, giftedness, and possibility that lies at the heart of all of us… even the toothless, bearded, slightly dirty ones of us that we usually pass over or look away from.
Thanks for your suggestion. We should learn from our previous work.
Life Insurance Cover
November 11, 2008
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