Frozen Pipes and Divine Intervention

So, On Monday nights, our family worship time is usually centered around talking more about what our pastor preached on Sunday. He's been going through the book of Hosea and was talking about "Spiritual Stubbornness". I like to use some sort of object lesson when teaching The Word to my family but this time...I had nothing good. The bit in Deuteronomy about stoning the stubborn son seemed a bit intense for a four year old and an 18 month old. I had thought of 50 ways to illustrate "Stubbornness"...and all of them sucked.
I got home from work and Chrissy told me that the cold water pipe running to the washing machine had froze. It's been colder than cold lately (-7 last night...-1 right now). I had just walked through the door after a super busy day at work....not exactly the project I wanted to tackle at that moment....but, duty calls, ya know?
Gavin was interested in what was going on with the washer. Now, he's a great little helper but, he's still at such a young age that doing a project with him alongside me usually takes about 50% longer than if I were to just do it myself....I was sorta hoping to just fix this thing quickly and then eat some dinner BUT, it's a great opportunity for him to learn and it's good quality time spent with dad so I had him help me out. We pulled the washing machine hose off of the cold water line and ran the water...it flowed out of the pipe no problem. O.k. so, it's not the pipe, it's the hose. We then pulled the other end of the hose off of the washing machine...I tried to blow through it.....nothing. Plugged.
We took the hose upstairs and ran hot water through it....and about 5 minutes later, I blew again, this time blowing a 3 inch cylinder of ice out of the hose and shattering onto the laundry room floor. We wrapped the threads with plumbers tape, reinstalled the hose, and were back in business. As we were putting away our tools....it hit me. Straight from The Lord. Like a ball peen hammer between the eyes:

"There's your "Stubbornness" illustration."

Just like that.

At family worship...we talked about how the hose was plugged...it couldn't do it's job and prevented the washing machine from doing work as well. Only when the hose was cleared could it do the job that it was intended to do..and only then could it provide the means for the washing machine to do the job that IT was designed to do. When it was sitting there all clogged up...it was useless.

We then parallelled that to our own hearts...how we hang onto things that we want...and make decisions based on what WE want to do...not what HE has for us...and we clog ourselves up with selfishness, disobedience....sin...our own agenda. We sit there with our hearts plugged with filth...useless...unable to do the work that we were designed to do. Unable to reach those that we are supposed to be reaching...all because we are clogged with our own selfish desires.
It's when we submit to Him and humbly allow Him to move obstacles out of our way that we begin to be able to be used by Him for His Glory.

Thank you, Lord. What a gift to be able to use this fix-it project as an opportunity to teach my family God's Will for us. I am continually blown away by the places that we see God when we are interested in finding Him. He will literally use ANYTHING to teach us about Him...if we are open to learning.

He's so cool like that.