Rich Kao

This is a fly-by entry that will probably become a sermon one day. 

1) My wife just bought an awesome new kitchen faucet from IKEA, chrome, goose neck, the whole nine yards.  I set out to install it and everything was going great; from removal of old faucet to dropping in new one, to hook-ups to not knocking my head under the sink.  Then I turned the water shut-offs back on, and the lines were spurting water all over.  After fitting and refitting, tightening and retightening, the leak was still there.  Coudn't figure out why water was still squirting out of the connections until my deep research found the culprit...an old dried out gasket in one of the locking points.  I had to run all over the city to find this little special gasket, only to find a comparable one, but not a true replacement.  After snuggling in the gasket to it's spot, I was dismayed to find, the lines still sprung a leak.   Wow...here I was with a $200 beautiful, chrome faucet worthy of a picture in a home magazine, and it was going no where because of a little gasket.  What power this little 30 cent gasket had over the $200 faucet.

2) Our church bought a brand new projector a while back, with easy to use controls, easy hook-up to laptops, and best of high, a high intensity lamp to bring out the best in our powerpoints and videos.  After several weekends of satisfied use, I got to our service one morning and proceeded to hook-up my laptop to the projector, only to find out there was no power cord for the projector to run off of.   All our presentations that week were "lost."  All the work we put into the graphics to synchronize with our message was "gone."  It was all stuck on my laptop with no where to go.  There was no way to project our work.  What power a $5 power cord had over our weeks worth of work and preparation.

Take away:  We can get all excited about the sexy chrome faucets and high powered projectors in our life, how great it looks, and how much value it will add to our lives, but we won't be going anywhere unless we have the hidden, humble, small, unheralded but incredibly critical non-sexy gaskets and power cords in our lives.  If we don't have them, there will be no power, and we will spring leaks.   

What are the gaskets and power cords you need to tend to in your walk with God and ministry?