I needed to be born wealthy. It’s not because I have expensive tastes; it’s because I lack the skills to fix things.

I’m not great at working with my hands; it doesn’t come that easily to me.

If I was wealthy I wouldn’t have to fix things, or make things, or put things together. I could hire someone to do all that!

I’m not saying that wealthy people never fix things themselves. Some are handy, so they use their money in other ways. I would use money to hire out jobs around the house.

Reality for me, however, is I have had to learn to do things that I’m not particularly adept at.

Like this week when we had three taps that all leaked. There were two in the laundry room and one up in the ceiling of our family room that led to an outside faucet.

I sized up the work involved, took pictures and set off for the hardware store. The guy at the store looked at my pictures, listened to my explanation and then handed me a small package of washers.

He said there was a small washer at the end of these taps, and all I had to do was just remove the tap, use a screwdriver to remove the washer, replace it and put it back together.

I was encouraged. It sounded like a 15 minute job – half hour at best. Easy.

Well, it would have been easy for a handy guy … not so easy for me.

I won’t go into all the details but I had a lot of trouble loosening the screws. They were like frozen on. I guess over the years, having had water on it every day, it got stuck in place.

Well, let’s just say 5 jabs to my finger later – 3 with a screwdriver and 2 with an utility knife – I was no closer to fixing those taps.

I went to the same hardware store twice, and then didn’t think I could show my face there again.  I ended up going to two more hardware stores … not all in one trip. There were four separate trips to hardware stores!

At one point, I just sat down in the family room and watched TV. There wasn’t anything on. It was the middle of the afternoon but I needed something to take my mind off the fifteen minute job I couldn’t complete.

As I sat on the couch, I thought, “If I was wealthy, I’d have a guy in here right now. I’d be able to chat with him while he completed the task.” … But that’s not my lot in life.

I didn’t change the washers out on all the taps and they still leaked a bit. That’s when I looked at my bank account and decided I was richer than I thought.

So I purchased three new taps (they come with washers already in place) for 300% of the cost of the washers. It took me about 20 minutes to get them installed and the leaks were gone.

Why didn’t I just do that in the first place?!

Here’s the thing: Not being handy is a lot like us having to deal with temptation. We are not that good at it. It’s difficult work and we don’t do well much of the time. We get hurt or hurt others in the process. As difficult as it is to keep from sinning, there is coming a day when the riches of heaven will make temptation a thing of the past. Keep doing the hard work in the mean time.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What makes temptation hard work for you? Leave your comment below.