Pungent Problem (Part Two)

When we came home from church two Sundays ago and entered our smelly house, we could not stand the stench any longer.  Caroline and I helpfully fled to our upstairs bedrooms while Mom and Dad tackled the problem practically. 

My parents found the odiferous wall in which the animal must have died.  After moving an entire bookcase to get to the interior wall, they prepared to cut into it, extract the smelly critter, and be done with the whole ordeal.  When they finished sawing into the wall of our finished basement, they saw… nothing.  The foul odor was clearly coming from that wall, but nothing was there.  What were we to do?

After taking a break from the basement, Dad returned to clean up the saw.  That is when he noticed that the basement carpet was just slightly damp.  So, instead of tearing our walls apart, we began ripping up carpet. 

Somehow, water was getting into the basement and soaking our 18-year-old carpet pad.  (In case you have not guessed, the resulting aroma is far from pleasant!)  A neighbor helped us figure out where the water was coming from when he saw paint peeling from a wall.  Interestingly, it was on the opposite side of the room from the wall in which Mom and Dad had made a hole.  An exterior faucet on the level above had leaked earlier that week, as evidenced by the water that began pouring through the basement ceiling when Dad turned it on the following day to double-check.

We spent that Sunday evening ripping up foul-smelling carpet.  (Meanwhile, I was terribly disappointed that I could not post my blog post about something dying since nothing had actually died!)  Although the project took hours, it felt wonderful to get the smell out of our house. 

Extracting the carpet meant that everything on top of the carpet had to move – plastic bins, 6 full bookcases, a desk… have I mentioned that we have too much stuff?  That was a powerful reminder to me to not hold onto spiritual junk!  As Matthew 16:25 says, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.”  Am I continually holding every aspect of my life loosely enough to let go of it, in obedience, in an instant?  A short way into the night, I was convinced that most of the items I hauled from one room into the other were more bother than they were worth.  Spiritually, anything we have to lug around that would slow down our pursuit of Jesus is worthless.  “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.” (Phil. 3:8)

As we finished the task, we began to see the hidden blessing.  We had been working for nearly a year to get our basement fixed up as a second living space with special furniture from Dad’s parents’ estate.  We were almost ready to replace the basement carpet as the final touch.  If the carpet had been soaked far into the main room, our family furniture would have been water-damaged.  (All but one of our bookshelves in the other room were damaged, though the other furniture had plastic sliders – another blessing!)  The carpet was wet into the main room, but stopped just short of the furniture from grandparents.  Nothing of any sentimental value was damaged… but the carpet in every room was water-damaged.  Insurance will cover the damage to our walls and hopefully cover the cost of new carpet for much, if not all, of our basement! 

Our house stank last week, but nothing had died.  Why then did I write a whole blog post on death?  As Mom observed, “Stagnant water smells like death.”  Our basement was filled with hidden, stagnant water!  We are supposed to be filled with living water, not stagnant water! 

Jesus declared, “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:38)  What is flowing out of our lives – living water or putrid death?  May Jesus be the aroma of our whole lives!

Pungent Problem (Part One)

Our house stunk last week.

We were sure that something had died. 

Tuesday a week ago, we thought our dog trotted into the basement instead of going outside.  Mom and Dad cleaned anything they could find downstairs on our old carpet.  It stank… and I didn’t offer to help. 

Last Wednesday morning, I came downstairs to let a friend in for prayer and was horrified.  She can’t come in a house that smells this way!  I shut the basement door, the smell died down on the main level, and I didn’t bother about it till someone opened the door on Thursday morning.

I was sick of the smell by Thursday morning.  I’m pretty sure I have the most sensitive nose in our family.  (I’ve thought that on other occasions, too!)  I marched into the basement myself armed with strong carpet cleaner and scrubbed every stain I could find in the smelliest area.  There was a clear place that smelled; I could walk away and it would be less.  It smelled better, but not odorless, when I was done.

By Friday, when the smell refused to leave, one of my parents had the brilliant idea that something died.  They searched the basement and couldn’t find anything.  Something must have died in the walls of our house.  Gross. 

There are some lovely spiritual analogies to draw from this pungent experience.

First, death stinks.  The old man, the one who is spiritually dead to God, reeks.  The smell will fill quite a large space!  And the longer death lies around, the more foul odor it gives off.  Spiritual death must reek in God’s nose.  Every once in a while when I get a whiff of mine, I am horrified.

Second, I empathize with Martha.  “Lord, he stinketh.”  The account of Lazarus being raised from the dead is suddenly much more impressive.  Four days?  That would be like whatever decaying critter we have being raised to life when the smell was at its worst.  I know that when the flesh has finished decaying, the smell will go away, but it was only getting worse in our house!  Four days of death is both pungent and real.

Third, death leads to skeletons.  If death goes on untouched by Jesus’ Life, all the flesh will rot away and leave only a skeleton.  (I know this because apparently we had the same stinky issue once before Caroline was born.  Something died in the walls right by Mom and Dad’s room.  The smell eventually left after a couple weeks.)  Skeletons are nice in this situation, but they are the last stage of death spiritually.  Talk to Ezekiel.  It took several moves of God and testings of faith before the skeletons were put together, covered with flesh, given the breath of life, and raised to their feet as a mighty army.  Let’s not wait for God to raise up skeletons.  He is quite willing to save us from the sting (and stink) of death if we turn to Him now. 

   

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Part Two, and an unexpected explanation, coming soon!

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