The innards

As I write, the sound of a wetvac pervades my home.  Two gentlemen from the Embassy, one doing the heavy labor, the other supervising, are vacuuming 3 rooms of my first floor, flooded by a faulty pipe.  Quite a surprise!!  It’s been probably the most eventful day aside from my arrival a bit over a week ago. 

There were about 7 buckets of water
they sucked out of my home.

I came home to meet the folk who came to install my internet but then had to leave to go back to work. Thank God the internet folk were there because they were the ones to call and tell me that there was a leak and they stopped it too!  Now that’s service.  Although they were not able to finish up the internet connection, they were indispensable in making a bad situation not as bad as it could have been.  My entire first floor could have been flooded if no one had been there and I came home @3 hours later.  So I am thankful for that. . .I am also very thankful for whatever was the brilliant one that made a wetvac part of the Embassy stock of tools. Indispensable.  Here’s the team: two barefoot  Beninese gentlemen and a wetvac.  Beautiful feet indeed.

This experience reminds me of when I received an email from my USAID inspiration/friend, Shawn Jones about her now home in Israel.  She asked folk to pray for different aspects of her home and time there.  I told her I'd pray for the “innards.” That includes the pipes, the wires, the plaster, the stuff behind the walls that aren’t seen but are so key to the healthy functioning of the home. It was a bit random when I thought to pray for that but so appropriate.  It looks like I need some innards prayer too. 

Deeper: Often in life it’s the things on the surface of life that grab our attention and are often the focus of our prayer.  They’re on the surface but that’s not to say that they are small.  They can be huge surface areas of life like jobs, living situations, homes, money, etc.  But then there are the innards, the root of stuff: heart issues, relationships, past wounds, insecurities stemming from childhood, emotional scars, etc. things that are more easily hidden and swept under the rug.  But those are the things that inevitable affect and seep to the more surface aspect sof life.  So the innards prayer has many applications.