Gardens along the way...blowing out the pipes...

 Gardens along the way...blowing out the pipes...

Down every street, there are trucks running around with air compressors, going from house to house, yard to yard....signs abound advertising “we blowout your sprinkler systems “ adding their phone numbers....a yearly ritual and needful job before the really cold of winter sets in, and freezes the pipes....(the next signs will be “we repair sprinkler systems)...

You watch these workers, their equipment, the process of blowing out the pipes...water, and then vapor exit all the sprinkler heads, drip systems, eliminating any excess or “standing” water from the underground/unseen pipes...one of the final preparations for winter...(we are still raking leaves, waiting for those final ones to drop).

Not sure I am ready for winter, but it is built into our world, giving rest to us all...after the fast growth of spring, the vigor and harvest of summer, the richness and final harvest of autumn...the earth needs the rest in preparation the the next year ...around and around, season upon season...

But, back to the “blowouts “....a reminder of what do I still harbor in the hidden  underground “pipes” of my life...what needs to “blowout “...so that it doesn’t expand and break ...

I thought of Jesus’ analogy of the yeast, leaven...it expands, like sin, it grows...beware of false teaching...when we thought it was hidden...

Repeatedly, for offerings, the Israelites were told to offer bread without leavening..the finest flour, without yeast... offering themselves, clean...no sin...they left Egypt with bread within leavening...they have the "feast of unleavened bread”...commemorating their leaving Egypt on the way to the promised land...God’s deliverance...

Do not eat it with bread made with yeast, but for seven days eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, because you left Egypt in haste —so that all the days of your life you may remember the time of your departure from Egypt.

Deuteronomy 16:3

 

If your grain offering is prepared on a griddle, it is to be made of the finest flour mixed with oil, and without yeast.

Leviticus 2:5

11 How is it you don’t understand that I was not talking to you about bread? But be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Then they understood that he was not telling them to guard against the yeast used in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Matthew 16:11-12 

Or Paul’s reference to yeast...

Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

1 Corinthians 5:6-8

Just like blowouts...a little water can damage a whole piping system...

The yeast of hidden old bread, old habits, old life, old sin...I need to lay those down, clean out , “blowout “...get rid of...confess...in preparation for the new filling...truth, sincerity, the fruit of the Spirit...the transforming....

Thank YOU again for simple pictures to remind me of your lessons for my life....help me be watchful of things I need “blown out “...gotten rid of...