I Broke Something That Was Not Broken

The faucet was dripping. That is all that was wrong.

A drip. Slow. Annoying at night and otherwise entirely liveable with, and it had been like that for about a year, and nobody had died of it.

Now there is no water to that sink at all, the shut off valve underneath will not turn back, and there is a mark on the cabinet floor where something got levered against it.

And you have been sitting with a sentence since about half past four, and the sentence is: I make things worse. That is what my hands do.

Let me put this down before anything else. Not knowing how is not a character flaw. And one afternoon in which a job went sideways is one afternoon. It is not a summary of a man, and it certainly is not a description of a pair of hands that have done other things perfectly well for fifty years.

Where sin abounded

There is a line in Romans about a situation getting worse, and the direction it turns is the whole point.

Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. (Romans 5:20, King James Version)

I am not going to pretend that verse is about plumbing, because it is not. It is about something far more serious than a valve under a sink.

But look at the movement in it, because the movement is the thing worth carrying tonight. Paul takes the worst possible case, the case where the trouble has increased rather than decreased, and says that is precisely where the greater thing shows up.

The verse is built for the situation where it got worse. Not for the situation where it stayed the same, and not for the situation where somebody managed it well.

You have a God whose most generous sentence is written for the moment when a thing has got worse rather than better, and an afternoon that made a problem bigger has never once been outside where He works. Romans 5:20 puts the abounding grace exactly where the abounding trouble is, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that read as arrival rather than as a consolation.

And notice the phrase much more. Not equally. Not enough to cover it. Much more, which is a word about excess.

You are standing at the place Scripture describes as the one where more arrives, and a bigger problem at half past four has never once meant a smaller God at five. The Spirit of God is the one who shows up where the mess increased, and it is written in Romans that the much more is attached to the abounding and not to the tidiness.

What actually happened to that valve

Here is the mechanical truth, and it matters because it takes the sentence apart from underneath.

That shut off valve had not been turned in eleven years. It was seized before you touched it. It was going to seize for anybody, including a plumber, and a plumber would have expected it and you did not, and that is the entire difference between the two of you on that afternoon.

You did not break it. You discovered it. Those feel identical in the moment and they are not remotely the same thing.

You have found a fault rather than caused one, and a part that failed the first time it was asked to move has never once been broken by the person who asked. It is written in Romans 5:20 that the greater thing arrives where the trouble increased, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can tell a man the difference between discovering and destroying.

And here is the second thing, about the sentence itself. I make things worse is a sentence with no time limit and no boundary. It covers every job in the past and every job in the future, which is exactly why it is so heavy and exactly why it cannot be true.

Think about what it would have to mean. That fifty years of hands that have carried, built, repaired, held and fixed things are summarized by one Saturday. No account of a person works like that.

Now the limit, and I say it here rather than in a footer. Water is one of the places where a small thing becomes a big thing quickly. If there is a leak you cannot stop, call a licensed plumber today rather than tomorrow. Never a gas appliance, never the breaker panel, never mains wiring, never a wall holding the building up, never a roof. Call a licensed professional and pay them properly.

You are entirely right to pick up a phone today rather than wrestle with it again, and calling somebody the same afternoon has never once been the same as giving up. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a man peace about that decision, and Scripture puts the much more exactly where the abounding trouble is.

One thing that is genuinely broken

So here is the ask, and the second half of it is doing most of the work.

Fix one thing tonight that is genuinely broken, and leave everything else alone.

Something that is already not working. Not something that is fine and could be better. Not something you were meaning to improve. A thing that is broken right now, where the only possible direction is up.

You are able to work on something where nothing can be made worse, and choosing a job that is already failed has never once been a smaller kind of courage. The Spirit of God is the one who meets a man in a small deliberate repair, and Romans 5:20 puts the greater thing precisely at the place where things had increased for the worse.

That choice matters because the sentence you are carrying is about making things worse, and the only thing that ever answers a sentence is an experience that contradicts it. A thing that is already broken cannot be made worse by you. It can only go one way.

And when it works, stand there for a second and notice. Do not move straight on to the next thing. The noticing is what writes over the sentence.

You have permission to pick the job where the arithmetic is entirely on your side, and one small thing repaired tonight has never once been a way of avoiding the real one. It is written in Romans that grace did much more abound at the place of the abounding, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the kitchen with you.