"The clock is ticking..."

So we're trying to sell our house. We've lived there about eleven years. Most of the last year we've been doing the usual "fix-up" you do before you try and sell- painting, spackling (not necessarily in that order!), cleaning, planting, etc. You know the routine. Out of the blue, my wife says, "I've been talking to my dad, and he says that a hot water heater only lasts about twelve years. We ought to replace it since we're nearing that twelve year mark." What?, I'm thinking. Has she lost her mind? We've had hot water heaters last fifteen or sixteen years before. Replace something before it's broken? Does she think we're made of money? It'll last until the house sells. Besides... "we've got plenty of time." I can still hear the echoes in my mind of me saying those fateful words.

I've been working out of the area lately, and as I was having my nightly "goodnight chat" with my wife the other night, she suddenly screamed into the phone, "Omigosh! The carpet's soaked!" I could tell by the emotion in her voice that the situation was critical- but separated by many miles, and being limited only to what she could tell me over the phone (and partial information from a hysterical woman does not help troubleshoot a problem via long distance!), I had no clue what was happening. It was nearly 10:30 in the evening. With her becoming mroe and more frantic and my having absolutely no clue as to the true source of the problem, I packed a bag, filled the car with gas, and hit the road. I walked into the house a little before 1:00am.

Come to find out, the tank in the hot water heater had sprung a major leak, and the leaking water had run under the wall from the utility closet in the garage into the bedroom which adjoined it, and saturated about half of the carpet in the bedroom and closet. I turned off the gas and water to the water heater, and hooked up a garden hose to the drain valve in order to empty what was left of the water in the tank. Between a shop-vac and a carpet cleaner, we managed to suck up most of the water from the carpet. We put fans and a de-humidifier in the room, and within thirty-six hours everything was pretty much back to normal- except our bank account. Have you priced parts and labor for a gas hot water heater lately?! Oh my gosh!

Sure, my wife was probably right about giving some attention to the water heater before it became an emergency item. Yeah, I'm a tight wad, and it came back to bite me in the rear. But that false assurance of thinking "we've got plenty of time"... well, that's something that bothers me most. Because we all tend to take that dangerous line of thinking and apply it across the board in too many areas way too often.

I heard a commercial on TV years back. It said something along the lines of "if there's a 50% chance of rain, we'll carry an umbrella; if there's a 70% chance that lightening will strike where you're standing, you'll move." Fact is, there's a 100% chance that each of us will die- yet how many fail to act at all, much less plan in a timely manner?

The Bible says that "God doesn't wish that any would perish", and that He "loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him might never die, but live forever." Are you banking on time that you may not have? If that's something you'd like to talk about, drop me a note at yakerchuck@gmail.com.