How did the inside look so beautiful and the outside look so unsightly? Then I started laughing and decided right then that we would keep this “biblical object lesson cabinet”. God had shown me a Bible truth using the hideous cabinet: “People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

The Flood

We came home from a trip to a flooded bathroom and hallway. My husband Joe, “not the plumber,” tried to fix the leak. Quickly giving up on the “do-it-yourself” project we called a real plumber. We also called our insurance company even though we thought the damage was minor and wouldn’t come into the realm of meeting our deductible. Wrong!

What looked like a small job began growing bigger. After the plumber deftly fixed the leak he suggested we get someone to come in and check the dry walls for water damage. “If left alone,” he said, “they could mildew.” Mildew, whoa, that’s an Old Testament plague! We don’t want mildew in our walls.

The Turbo Man

Our plumber recommended to us to call a “check for wet walls specialist.”  We called the “Turbo Man.” He held a small gizmo against our lower walls. It lit up and buzzed like a Fourth of July party.  “See those red lights,” he said. “Hear that buzz?” He continued, “That is a sure sign that there is water in your dry wall.” He continued to light up and buzz all the walls in the area of the bathroom. The invisible water was everywhere.

This called for three airplane-sized drying machines that had to be on for 24 hours to hopefully dry out the walls. The large jet size fans were loud. It was a torture machine for anyone with sensitive ears… like mine. But, the torturing noise wasn’t as bad as having the plague of mildew! Turbo Man returned late the next day and checked the walls again with his water detector gadget. Hooray, they were dry!

Next came the insurance appraiser to determine the damage and the steps we needed to take to get our house back to a “before the leak” status. Mind you, it all started in a small bathroom and now it had mushroomed into the mud room, the living room and the foyer.

The Appraiser

The appraiser took pictures of everything and sat down with his clipboard and said, “It looks like we’ll have to pull off all your baseboards and replace them. We’ll have to paint from floor to ceiling your mud room, bathroom, living room, and foyer. We will also have to put in a new cabinet in the bathroom.”   Joe and I approved the work that needed to be done. The next project for us was choosing the paint for the walls, baseboards and doors. After choosing we needed to schedule the painters to come do the work.

The Choice of Paint Color

Joe and I moved quickly to choose the paint color so that the restoration work could continue without a hold up. We picked out one color that would look good in all the areas that required painting and then we called our contractor. Ahh, I thought, we’re almost through with workers stomping through our house.

The Destructor

We were told that a man would come to tear out the old baseboard and replace it with new. He came, he saw, he destroyed. The new baseboards were cut and installed. Things were moving along efficiently.

The Painters

The door bell rang, and three painters had arrived. They had “Jesus fish” on their shirts. That was encouraging. Joe started talking to them about their shirts and yes, they were Christians. They went straight to work. They worked non-stop until every inch of our walls, baseboards and doors were covered with brand new paint.

The Hideous Cabinet

Our water ruined bathroom cabinet had to be replaced and we had to make another decision. What style and color did we want for the new cabinet? We looked at a lot of brochures and chose a maple cabinet. It looked wonderful in the brochure. When the cabinet arrived it didn’t look all that wonderful.

I had run errands and when I returned the cabinet was sitting upside down in the garage. The men were in the bathroom tearing out the old cabinet. Maybe, I thought, the lighting in the garage made it look awful. Hours later the damaged cabinet was replaced with the newly chosen one. It looked alright but not great. Maybe it’s the bathroom lighting? The men put the knobs on the cabinet and it looked a little better. They were through and they left.

I inspected the inside of the cabinet after they left. The inside was beautiful! The inside of our old, wet cabinet was horrid. The installation hole in the wall that was drilled for the sink pipes to fit had a giant gap allowing all sorts of bugs looking for a home into our house. The inside of the new cabinet was flawless. There were no gaps! It was beautiful inside…but the outside was ugly. The color was nothing I had ever seen before. How did the inside look so beautiful and the outside look so unsightly? Then I started laughing and decided right then that we would keep this “biblical object lesson cabinet”. God had shown me a Bible truth using the hideous cabinet.

“The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (I Samuel 16:7).

Miriam Gautier is a member of Springs Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Dunnellon, Fla.