A broken spirit is my sacrifice, God.
Psalm 51:17
You won’t despise a heart, God, that is broken and crushed.
Today is a followup to my January 13 post, “Bringing in the Heavy Equipment.” Unfortunately – and I will try to say this without more than a passing reference to the (how should I say this delicately) raw sewage – the extreme interventions of that day did little more than buy us a few weeks before the situation “resurfaced” so to speak.
It turns out that you can have all the PSI in the world at your disposal and it will not overcome the more fundamental issue of a collapsed pipe. Even cast iron, it turns out, is not equal to the potency of the root system of a medium sized oak tree. Our pipe taking sewage out to the street was broken and – eventually, inevitably – everything backed up once again.
The good news is that the Town of Tarboro has reliable, friendly, helpful, hard-working people in its public works department.
The guys came out close to immediately, they stayed until the job was done, and they were extremely courteous. All told I counted at least eleven people, five vehicles (including two pieces of heavy equipment), and more than four hours of hard work.
To me this is just another example of the benefits of being in a small town. Everything we have been involved with has come with a real sense of community ownership. So kudos to the Town of Tarboro and this quality of helpful response.
I cannot begin to enumerate the extent of the challenges that face small towns like this one, with historic homes and aging infrastructure and a tentative tax base. But one of the many advantages Tarboro does have – and that turn out to be priceless – is this sense of community, and pride, and “can-do,” and mutual cooperation.
When people pull together as a community then pretty much anything is possible. We are seeing this in the church at Howard Memorial Presbyterian, and every time I bump up against the town’s positive civic framework I see it there too.
This 15-second video captures things quite nicely:
It’s like I said in my post on the church website, writing about the connection between HMPC and the influential hymn “Spirit of the living God” – penned here in 1926 by then pastor Daniel Iverson…
According to some authorities, Iverson’s original wording included the more challenging invitation for God to, “Break me, melt me, mold me, fill me.” Regardless, the implication is clear; our future, as our past, is only possible to the extent that we give ourselves over completely to God’s initiatives of restoration, grace, mercy, love, redemption, justice, and healing.
HMPC website
Sometimes we have to be broken – or at least admit to being broken – before we can be restored, and used, and blessed in the ways God intends: A broken spirit is my sacrifice, God. You won’t despise a heart, God, that is broken and crushed (Psalm 51:17).
So, again, bring in the heavy equipment. Whatever it takes, Lord. – DEREK
STUFF happens.