Sometimes it takes a flood to drive a point home.
Wes Wick
My heart has no desire to stay, where doubts arise and fears dismay.
Though some may dwell where these abound, my prayer, my aim, is higher ground.
Lord, lift me up and let me stand, by faith on Heaven’s table land.
A higher plain than I have found: Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.
- from Higher Ground, by Hymn Writer Johnson Oatman, Jr.
El Niño packed a punch and flooded our home office twice last year, once in October and again in January.
Flood me once, shame on El Niño; flood me twice, shame on me.
Obviously, the right solution did not sink in the first time around. It was my heart that sank as a hundred gallons of rainwater again saturated our floor and carpet. “Where did I go wrong this time?” I wondered.
Living in a redwood forest at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains has both overwhelming challenges and beauty, much like the later seasons of life. And, as much as I like being right, I learned the hard way that my approach to our flooding problem was all wet!
Count it all joy! Through the storm, the Lord showered me with fresh perspective on how easy it is to approach problems too narrowly and neglect solutions at a higher plain.
Taking the Battle Upstream
. . . I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations. . . Deuteronomy 5:9 (NKJV)
When plagued with outside water in our downstairs office several years ago, I installed a small, interior French drain and raised the floor in half the room to resolve the occasional trickle that made its way into the lower story of our home. This was a costly, low level approach, but took care of the problem where it surfaced inside. Or so I thought.
Returning home to a flood in October, I discovered a downspout on the uphill side of our home was clogged. After pulling up our carpet and living in mild chaos for a week, I cleared the gutter, downspout and accompanying drain. Addressing the problem at a second level gave me a short-lived sense of overconfidence in my flood management skills.
When torrential downpours caused more flooding in January, wisdom slowly and uncharacteristically prevailed. I called a friend. He in turn called a couple more friends, and we had a party in the rain. As we know from Proverbs, there is victory in an abundance of counselors (and workers!).
The interior French drain was not draining water fast enough. It appeared this lowest and smallest drain had failed Checking outside we saw that the gutter and downspouts were draining properly. This next-to-last generation of flood defense was working just fine. We then noticed rainwater from the hillside cascading over a retaining wall, never reaching the drain pipe at its base. Attacking this grandfather-level of flood prevention, we began digging extra trenches at the bottom of the hillside.
While watching water continuing to slosh unabated down our slope, I vaguely recalled seeing a catch basin up the hill about twenty yards away. We trekked uphill and saw a considerable volume of water streaming into the catch basin and down a ten-inch pipe. This single basin and large pipe were diverting more water than all the lower drains combined! Yet, because of years of neglect, the basin was failing to capture and re-direct about a third of the water coming its way. It took only five minutes of shoveling around this first line of defense to help the catch basin do its full job. Once this problem was corrected, we were able to stop digging trenches at the base of the hill. And then, in spite of a continuing downpour, the water flowing into the interior French drain slowed to a faint trickle.
Because the first line of defense was working properly, we were able to see that the final line of defense was also working. It hadn’t failed as we originally surmised.
What did I take away from this experience besides a soggy carpet, sore back and bruised ego?
- I learned my direct and even bi-level approaches were inadequate.
- I wrongfully assumed that the last line of flooding defense had completely failed.
- My expensive, relatively high tech solution at the spot where the problem was most visible had some value. But when things got real stormy, it alone was not the bridge over troubled waters.
- While each level of flooding defense was critical, devoting attention to the first line of defense some distance away proved to be the least costly and most effective solution. Put in place by the designer of our home, it was a critical part of the solution I had neglected for years.
Amaziah the Righteous, Half-Hearted King
The great grandpa, Catch Basin, in our rainforest adventure reminded my wife and me of this Old Testament king:
Amaziah (King of Judah) did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but not wholeheartedly. Chronicles 25:2 (NIV)
Much like the catch basin uphill and away from our home, many great grandparents are doing what’s right, but not wholeheartedly. Holding back from loving God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, their shallow devotion may be spawning disaster for those downstream.
One of the most strategic steps we can take as church leaders is helping to direct these great grandparents and grandparents in the faith toward wholehearted devotion.
Every line of defense is vital in shielding our youngest generations from the floodgates of sin. Churches tend to invest heavily at the youngest levels and often ignore or pacify the upper end of the age spectrum.
How often we fail to see the connection between half-hearted, later-life devotion and the problems of young people immersed in sin and absent from church life!
Most seasoned Christians seem to be living right. They certainly don’t activate the flood sirens. Because of their advancing age we give them a pass on spiritual half-heartedness, ignoring the negative trickle-down effect on younger generations. The oldest among us may not need the same kind of spiritual attention as the youngest, but their strategic potential for disciple-making, modeling, resourcing and inspiration cannot be overlooked.
Many older adults within our churches suffer from years of neglect and presumption, much like how I treated our forgotten catch basin up the hill. I hadn’t given that basin a single drop of attention since moving into our home twelve years ago. It seemed far removed and irrelevant. I just assumed it was doing what it was supposed to do!
Foolishly, the first line of defense was the last solution I considered.
The Church faces a flood of challenges with consequences far more devastating than damaged floor covering. Let’s make sure we’re giving attention to every generation’s line of defense.
Wholeheartedly.
Wes Wick along with his wife, Judy, are co-founders of YES! Young Enough to Serve, an organization that celebrates the joy of extended fruitfulness. YES! helps harness the gifts of longevity, health, wisdom and life experience of adults in life’s later seasons. Learn more at www.yestoserve.org. Wes recently joined The CASA Network Board of Directors.
