The water boiler at church which provides hot water for teas and coffees has been under scrutiny recently. It stopped working a few weeks ago, with the ‘ready’ red light flashing persistently but never stabilising and the water temperature never getting sufficiently warm as a result. The boiler is still under warranty, so the service engineer came out and fixed the problem. He mentioned that the boiler was getting very scaled up and so this week we have had it descaled.
This flurry of activity has provoked quite a lot of conversation. As we mused on how the water boiler works, we decided that it was rather an apt metaphor for the living water Jesus describes in John 7:37-39. The rivers of living water which the Holy Spirit provides are not meant to become stagnant pools in our lives. We receive living water from God and this overflows into the world so that we become His servants, offering this living water to all around us. Just as the boiler does not look particularly big and in a way can only hold a fixed amount of water, so we too don’t look anything special! (see 2 Cor 4:7) Nonetheless, because the water boiler is plumbed to the mains supply, there is a never-ending supply of water from which we can draw. So, too, if our lives are plumbed in to the Master Plumber, we need never run dry.
Then we got to pondering scale. Limescale is the hard, off-white, chalky deposit found in kettles, hot-water boilers and the inside of inadequately maintained hot-water central heating systems. In order to remove it, descaling agents (typically acidic compounds such as hydrochloric acid that react with the alkaline carbonate compounds present in the scale) are used. Then the boiler can function at its maximum efficiency.
Our lives can very easily run dry if we allow sin to entangle us and the weeds of this life (chiefly worry, anxiety, lack of trust in God and worldly attitudes) to choke the word of God in us. We have to be ruthless with everything that hinders us and the sin that entangles us (Heb 12:1) so that we can run the race God has marked out for us, so that His living water can flow freely from us, rather than trickling out in dribs and drabs.
We’re glad the boiler’s working again, but we’re also glad for the spiritual insights it has given us!