Bamboo and Basements

Being a home owner has its advantages but let me tell you it also has its problems. When I bought our house two years ago the backyard was like a jungle. There were two clumps of bamboo. They were pretty big and in inconvenient locations so I decided to cut them down. The bamboo didn’t like that idea and came back rather quickly with a vengeance. So I tried to kill it. I cut it all down again and then over fertilized the back yard and covered it with clear plastic. This was supposed to completely burn t out. This was a sure way to get rid of the stuff. It worked! So I thought. It looked like all the bamboo had died and I wasn’t going to have a problem tilling up the backyard to plant a new yard. Well, about a month ago it decided to start coming back. And it is everywhere again.

Another frustrating thing that happened recently was my basement flooding. This past winter we had some heavy snowfall and when it started melting water got into places that it had never gotten into before. One of those places was my basement. I went outside and the water was puddling up right at the downspout at the corner of the house. I was sure this was the problem. I piped the water into the yard and then started mopping up the mess downstairs. Well, just a week or two ago it happened again. I ran outside to see if I could see where the water was coming from and I saw 4 inches of standing water in my window well. The water was just pouring down this thing from all directions of my yard. I quickly moved some dirt around to fix the problem but the damage had already happened.

I started thinking about our spiritual lives and how much they are like owning a home. We work and work and work on our lives fixing problems here and there. But how many times have you felt like you fixed something in your life just to find out that you were wrong. Just when you thought you had conquered that temptation in your life something came up and you fell. When it came to my bamboo and basement I thought I had eliminated the problem. It didn’t take a real long time to discover that the problem was a lot deeper than I first had realized it. If I want to get rid of my bamboo I need to go deeper than I have gone before and if I want to prevent water from filling up my basement again I am going to need to do some irrigation.

We see the easy road and think that it is going to work. It is the quick fix. Matthew 7:13 tells us to enter through the narrow gate because wide is the gate that leads to destruction and many go through it. We look for the wide gate, the easy fix. We try to fix things ourselves and in frank honesty we suck at it. We are having to fix the same things over and over and over again. We are living in bondage. There is no freedom in that.

This past week in Sunday School we talked about the spiritual discipline of confession. What a lively discussion we had. If you want to see change in your life, if you want to see problems you battle with day in and day out disappear, than tell somebody. There is a great freedom and release when you share your burden with another. When fixing things on my house I have always counseled with my father. He is a mind full of wisdom when it comes to solving problems related to houses. He always has an answer, and if he doesn’t it doesn’t take him long to figure it out. At times, if my problem is too great, he will also come along side me and help me fix it. With his help I am able to get to the root f the problem and fix it for good. The same is true when it comes to confessing our sins to one another. We are able to seek counsel from others who have dealt with the same thing. And then they are able to some alongside of us and help us along the way.