A couple of weeks ago the loo at Dibley manse began to leak - not a pleasant experience, but after four days we finally got a plumber who fixed it.  The carpet (who in their right mind puts carpet in bathrooms?) was not exactly pleasant by this time, so the good people agreed to pay for it to be replaced with vinyl, and that I could redecorate the room (which was last done for my predecessor's predecessor).  The ceiling in said room was papered and in several places the paper was hanging down rather unattractively.  Before I opted to rip it off (which took under 2 minutes) I checked with the person who last decorated the room why he had papered it - evidently to hide some staining where the damp "used" to come in; the ceiling itself was, he assured me, sound.  Well, sound in so far as it didn't cave in on top of me, but it looks like a map of a drought parched river, with great cracks and an uneven surface, to say nothing of patches of copydex, superglue and goodness knows what where someone had tried to stick the paper back up.  The corner where the 'damp used to come in' was palpably wet...  Another call to the property team, I'll be so popular, I don't think!

But isn't it a parable of church life?  Or even personal discipleship?  The 'papering over the cracks' metaphor is widely used in many walks of life, and I guess Jesus' comment about whitewashed tombs is, in some ways, broadly similar.  I also wonder how much patching up we do with the wrong kind of glue, how much we cover up stains without dealing with what causes them, how easily our carefully constructed facades could be ripped down?

I have the paint etc all lined up to refresh this room, but first it needs the rot to be addressed.  All this takes time and is costly.  The quick fix is simply to re-paper the ceiling, and leave the problem for someone else to discover, something I concede may be the option we go for - I wonder how often we fall into the same trap in dicipleship and mission?  Building on sand or rock?

Tomorrow's plans to do some painting have now gone out of the window, but hopefully in the longer term it will prove worth the wait...