Meltdowns Require Bailouts

First published Friday, Feb. 15, 2009 in The Daily Sentinel


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This week, leaders from the House and Senate gathered together to finalize a new economic stimulus package. Almost $800 billion will be pumped into the U.S. economy, creating 3.5 million jobs, according to the Obama Whitehouse. But that’s not what I want to talk about this week.

I came home from a two-day pastors educational retreat on Wednesday night hoping to relax. I’m naturally an introvert, so after 48-or-so-hours being “on” with people, I needed some downtime to recharge my batteries. I didn’t get it.

We had accumulated over two feet of snow during January, and over the past several days, it all finally melted. Then on Wednesday, we got nearly two-and-one-half inches of rain. The snow meltdown saturated the ground. The rain had nowhere to go – except into my basement.

I told my wife I had better check the basement around 8 p.m. since I’d heard the sump pump working non-stop. With all that water, I thought there might be a little seepage into the laundry room, since that’s where the pump is located. I turned on the light in the stairwell, and thought, “That looks a little damp.”

I got to the bottom of the stairs and realized it was more than a little damp – it was downright flooded! More than three inches deep across the entire basement. Our meltdown now required a bailout in the worst way – immediately!

I know living around the Ohio River, basement flooding is not a new phenomenon. Most folks have figured out what to do to minimize the damage, and how to recover quickly when water gets in. And living in Racine, our parsonage basement flooded several times. Those Racine floods were also rain-induced. But we finally figured out that the problem in Racine had less to do with the amount of rain and more to do with a poorly sealed screw-hole for the widow wells.

In some ways, the Racine basement floods were worse because they all came into my older daughter’s basement bedroom. So we had to deal with carpet and furniture. On the other hand, the waters remained contained to one corner of the basement, so all the rest of the basement stayed dry. All our storage boxes and buckets stayed out of harm’s way.

Not so with our flooding this week in Perrysburg. Although our current basement does not have any finished-out living space, we did have quite a few cardboard boxes on the floor, and the waters were EVERYWHERE! Nothing was spared.

I’m sure some people reading this are shaking their heads and thinking, “you should have known better than to put cardboard on your floor.” We did think about that when we first moved into the house last summer. “Does the basement ever flood?” we asked the trustee chair. “Not that I’m aware of,” he said. “That sump pump does a great job taking care of water trying to seep into the basement.”

When the house had new gutters installed last fall, we changed the way water flowed from the house. Before, the gutters emptied directly into the sump pump; now they deflected water at the surface. I thought all of those measures would protect us. Now, I can only imagine how badly we would have flooded if the rain gutters still went to the sump.

So instead of a nice, quiet evening, my wife and I were up until midnight moving boxes and emptying the worst of them in hopes of salvaging their contents. We filled a 60-gallon trashcan with stuff that was clearly beyond repair, and filled every flat surface with the rest. Fortunately, little of the trashed stuff was of great value – financially or sentimentally. But going through all of those possessions reminded me of several scripture passages.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19-21)

Jesus said those words during his “Sermon on the Mount” as recorded in Matthew’s gospel. And I thought about how floods can destroy every bit as effectively as moths or rust. And I also thought about how obsessed with our past we can often be. Most of what I pulled up was stuff from more than 20 years ago: high school and college mementos, old record albums, artwork that I drew “back in the day.” My wife’s school materials were more recent, but even they had been sitting in boxes mostly unused for more than five years.

When we store up treasures in heaven, we are not obsessing with our past, but anticipating our future. I don’t really need my collection of ELO, Kansas and Styx albums, nor do I need that trophy I received for being “Outstanding Junior High Boy” at Choir Camp in 1979. I would much rather have the “trophy” for significant ministry waiting for me when I turn heavenward. What happens right now in my relationships is much more valuable than what happened then. Even though I’ve recently re-established connections with many of those friends from high school via Facebook, they aren’t as important as the person I visit in the hospital this afternoon.

So my lesson from this bailout following the meltdown is this: pay attention to the present rather than accumulate junk from the past. Be willing to let go of what was then in order to anticipate what is to come. And finally, stuff is simply stuff.

“Why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:28-33)