A Good Scrubbing

[Jeremy Gable]

Hi everyone!

 

Wow, so much to write about this week, and so little time to do it in!  I'll try to get it all done in the 35 minutes I have left online, but if I can't, then I'll have to finish it next week (God willing).

 

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March 11, 2006

 

The last few days I've spent the vast majority of my time inside the water tanks that supply the water to our school and to Spoon Village (Spoon Village is the western end of our project which includes the clinic and the Student Missionaries' huts).  They've been in dire need of cleaning for a while now, and since Danny is still recovering from malaria (or maybe still has it), I ended up with the enviable job of crawling down inside and scrubbing them out.  This is not the most pleasant job in the world (I can think of worse, but I don't want to jynx myself so I'll just leave those unmentioned ;-) ).  Using my arms, I lowered myself through the opening—which was too narrow for my shoulders with my arms down—until I was standing on my tip-toes on the bottom with my head poking out and my arms laying flat on top of the tank.  As my toes touched down, they proceeded to sink into the 3 inch deep sludge that had settled out at the bottom.  The tanks are over 10 years old and made of concrete and had so much silt and fungus caked on the sides that the rough walls had become smooth.  As I looked around at the giant task in front of me (and this was just the small tank!), I quickly became disheartened at the thought of the work ahead.  But I picked up my brush and began scrubbing away at the walls.  The slime was so think that the bristles of the brush left scratch marks on the walls.  Each time I finished a stroke with the brush, the bristles would fling mud and sand (from the concrete) into the air and all over me.  In a very short time I was covered in dirt and sand.  To make matters worse, As I looked at where I was scrubbing, it seemed like I wasn't accomplishing anything.  I reached down into the water at my feet and splashed a handful onto the scrubbed area.  A little bit of mud washed away, but not much.  My thoughts of the task quickly began to darken even more.  Hoping for better results, I splashed several more hands-full of water onto the area, but without effect.  With a sigh, I began scrubbing again, this time trying to splash water with one hand while scrubbing with the other.  This seems to take about the same coordination as rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time.  Consequently, I was not able to scrub very hard like this, and once again, had little effect.  After some more experimentation, I figured out that I could dip the brush and make two quick passes while there was still water clinging to it, before plunging it back under the water and repeating the process.  This proved to work fairly well, but of course, I can only use that meathod on the areas close to the water, and there was alot to scrub that was too far from the water.

 

I went ahead and scrubbed what I could using this meathod, but soon it came time to do the areas that were too far from the water.  When the water to this tank is turned on, it comes in through a pipe at the top edge of the wall, but this pipe only reaches a few inches into the tank, and there isn't enough water preasure for it to spray across to the other side.  Deciding to try and use it anyway, I climbed out of the tank (with much difficulty and straining of muscles), turned on the water valve, and then looked back inside.  As the water came out of the pipe, it traveled a few inches before plunging towards the bottom.  I reached my hand inside and partially covered the end of the pipe hoping to create preasure that could be sprayed on the walls.  As my hand covered the pipe, I suddenly heard water flowing into the OTHER tank behind me, and no increase of preasure in this one.  Instead of building up preasure that I could use for spraying, the water just flowed backwards up the overflow pipe coming out of the other tank!  Then it suddenly dawned on me.  If I could put a flexible hose on this pipe, I could just aim that wherever I needed it and my problem would be solved.  And I knew where there was a length of such hose that Pastor and I had cut a piece from to put on one of the pipes outside the tank!  After hiking to the eastern end of the project for the hose and coming back, I managed to shove the hose on with a little difficulty, turned the water back on, climbed into the tank, and tested it out.  Putting the brush to the wall and scrubbing away with one hand, I aimed the hose with the other hand.  As the brush scraped off the mud, the fresh, clean water immediately washed it away.  I was delighted!  With this extention I could even get water to the opposite wall and clean it as well.  My hopes suddenly brightened as I got back to work.  As I scrubbed and washed, it quickly became apparent that the areas cleaned with this method were ALOT cleaner than the areas I had previously cleaned.  I sprayed some clean water on the areas already scrubbed, and saw a little mud wash away, but not much.  So I put the new method to work on the old areas as well, and found that they weren't very clean at all!  The problem was, I had been using the muddy water at my feet to wash the scrubbed areas instead of clean water.  All I had been able to wash away like that was the really BIG stuff.  In order to get the very fine silt off the walls, I needed water that wasn't filled with the very same thing.  It was also very quickly apparent that it was ALOT faster to clean the walls with the clean water than it was with the muddy stuff.  I had spent almost the entire day scrubbing the lower half and washing it with muddy water, but within just 20 minutes or so, I was able to clean the entire upper half as well as recleaning the lower half!

 

The next day while I was cleaning the other, bigger tank, I was unable to utilize the same method because the inlet pipe was cemented in right up to the end of the pipe, so there was no place to shove a hoze over the end.  Consequently, it was very slow going with the big tank.  I was still able to use clean water because I had a bucket in there with me which I filled with clean water, and would use the plunge and scrub meathod from the bucket that I had previously used in the muddy water of the other tank.  As I was toiling away, I thought about the things I'd learned the previous day, and it occured to me that there was a lesson for life involved here.  We go about our lives being filled and using up what we're filled with, but rarely stop to consider the residue that's being left behind.  Before long, we're filled with filth on the inside and need to be cleaned out.  By the time we finally realize our filthy state, we're LONG overdue for the cleaning, so we set to work on it, but with lower spirits as we consider the enormous task ahead.  As we begin scrubbing away at ourselves, the process is very slow, and we make progress as we try to wash ourselves in the dirty water swirling at our feet.  We manage to get some of the big stuff, but all the very small things that REALLY pollute us are left behind.  We think we're getting clean, but not really.  What we need is a constantly fresh supply of clean Water.  There's really only one source of Water that clean, and that's Christ.  Only with the Water of Life can we be fully cleansed.  Looking at my hands as I'm typing this, I see all the places where I skinned my knuckles on the walls as well, and another lesson becomes clear.  While we only have dirty water with which to clean ourselves, we're also not very good at scrubbing either!  Why not turn the job over to the Master Scrubber, and let the Holy Spirit do the scrubbing for us?  He's alot better at seeing where all the dirt is hiding, and getting down into every tiny crack to get it out, without scraping His fingers!  I think we all need a good scrubbing, but we also need to let the clean Water flow into us, and let the right Person do the scrubbing.

 

I have another experience to write about as well, but I've run out of time for today, so hopefully I'll be able to write about it next week.  Take care, all of you, and may God bless you!

 

 

With love in Christ,

Jeremy Gable