I may need to write a book, well another one. This one would be informational and entitled something like Everything I need to know about being a Christian, I learned from taking care of a Pool. This summer has been crazy. Our pool from last year didn’t make it, so we purchased a second one. It was over 100 degrees a lot of the time and a pool was just a must. We bought another one of those small inflatable top pools that is about 10 foot around and has a little filter. We splurged the whole $95 on it… I know, we are big spenders! Unfortunately, we were hardly in it due to maintenance issues, my husband ended up being the only one to use it a lot and that was with the kiddos at night, after work usually.
Oh the wealth of information you can get from the littlest things in life. I am going to start with the first thing that I learned and work down my list. In a way, like a mini series or mini book… Here we go, lesson #1, Get a new cover that actually fits your pool and is made for it – don’t just use the one from last year’s pool and hope it works.
We used the cover for the pool that we had last year, which had gotten a hole in the inflatable ring and we had to replace. The cover was a different model than the one for this year and never officially stayed on it. It was like trying to force something to fit every time and it didn’t do any good. We would put it on and by morning time, the cover would ultimately be on the bottom of the pool or hanging off. It ended up on the ground most of the summer due to this issue. When on the ground, the sand and chickens got to it and so when we actually attempted to put it back onto the pool, it would succeed in making it dirtier.
That old saying “you can’t get a square peg to fit into a round hole”- so true, but I want to tweek it a bit. You can’t fit a round peg into a round hole that it wasn’t made for… It may ultimately fit into the round hole, but it isn’t secure and will fall off or out and even if you get it to “fit” it is obvious that it didn’t belong there in the first place.
Lets evaluate: how on earth does this silly pool cover relate to your relationship with God? How do you equate a messy pool cover with what is supposed to be a great life? Well, the pool is like our life, we try so hard to protect our lives on our own. We don’t want bugs, leaves, dirt, algae, feathers, and who knows what else to get into our lives so we try to protect it by covering it up. We try so hard to make our life look perfect and remain perfect by putting a world shaped cover on our life. We put a “cover” on our life that is supposed to fit, that worked in our past life, but wasn’t made for our new life. We want to be a “good Christian” but we want to do it on our own. We think that we don’t need help keeping out the nasties of the world, but we do!
This world is nasty. It is just getting nastier and nastier- the world that we live in is taking morality and throwing it out the window. It is taking things that we know aren’t right and making us feel abnormal for not following them. When we enter a relationship with Jesus (since Christianity isn’t a religion, it is a relationship) we are not saying that we are going to be perfect. We aren’t saying that we are going to live on our own. Instead we are asking God to come in and help us keep those nasties out of our life- to keep our waters (life) pure from the things that come flying or floating down from the world. We are asking for His help.
When we try to do this on our own, we can never succeed.
2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
You got a new pool, get the new cover! In easier terms – you have received a new life- don’t do it on your own! Don’t be cheap with your relationship with God- allow Him to help you to maintain your life- allow the cover of your life to be snug and fit properly so that it isn’t blown off or falls off and sinks to the bottom and makes it worse.
We ended up not using our cover for a lot of the summer. Since it didn’t fit, what was the point? So all this nasty stuff would get in and stay in there until we went through with that little net thing and pulled as much of it out as we could. HUGE bees and wasps and other things that had our kids stepped on in the pool, it would have been a bad situation. But really – when we can’t do it on our own, do we just say forget it? When we can’t protect our life on our own, do we just say, “I will clean it out later” and let the nasties come in without any barrier- just because our cover didn’t fit? Or do we go and get the new cover? Do we say, “this cover isn’t working, let me go get the one that is made for this pool and save it from being disgusting.”?
Now let me clarify – covers often times sit on top of the water- many times, some water is even on top of the cover by a little bit. It doesn’t mean these nasties aren’t going to touch our lives, but it isn’t going to sink to the bottom of our pool and fester there. It is easier to get those disgusting things out of our pool/life because it is right there on the surface.
There was a pretty large storm that rolled through our parts on Thursday. Electricity was down for quite a while, shingles were blown off, our little plastic shed was ripped apart, our wooden fort was torn apart and swing set thrown across the yard. Something else happened during that time. Our pool cover, that had been sitting on our porch because it didn’t do much for our pool was blown away. This isn’t really a light cover, but it was just plastic and if the storm is taking off wooden forts and shingles, plastic doesn’t have much of a chance. The cover got caught on our chain link fence and was shredded. It was shredded to little pieces- so even though it wasn’t doing us any good, it now would do even less good.
When storms come in our lives, our defenses aren’t going to be enough – we need the protection of Jesus. Mark 4 talks about a large storm. The disciples were out in a little boat, crossing a river. Jesus had a big day and was asleep. The storm was so rough that it was throwing this boat from side to side and the disciples were sure they were going to die. Finally, they appealed to Jesus and he stood up, and calmed the wind and the waves. He stood up and basically told them to be still and they were. If I were a disciple I am pretty sure I would be freaking out more about that than I was about the storm. How crazy would that be? All the sudden, you are in the storm of the century and you appeal to Jesus and the storm is gone. GONE… Poof- vanished!
All they had to do was to ask him, but they didn’t at first. They tried to cross the sea on their own. They tried to cover their pool on their own and their cover was blown away… Jesus said the word and the storm ceased and the waters were calm. He said the word and they were protected. So if he can protect them from a storm that might have drown them all, why are we not allowing Jesus to protect our lives? Why do we try so hard on our own to cover our lives and not just have the Jesus sized life cover come in and help keep the big stuff out.
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