“And (Jesus) answered them, saying, ‘Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?'”  Luke 14:5

When you have a big house you are blessed to host big family gatherings. So blessed. I was one so blessed several years ago on such a blessed Christmas when my blessed family arrived at my humble abode. All 25 of them.

It really was a nice day. Temperatures were good for late December in central Indiana. There was even time for a game of touch football after the slumbering effects of the turkey and ham had worn off. The second round of eating had begun and then it was time for indoor games. The younger children were running through the house like cowboys and Indians and I was thanking God for a finished basement…

Finally everyone was saying their goodbye’s and heading home. Everyone except my older brother and his family who lived out of state. They were spending the night with me. We had finally gotten some of the little ones down for the night and my beloved, hard-working sister-in-law had decided she had washed enough dishes to last her the rest of the year. She had tip-toed upstairs to her room.

We were just getting ready to get in bed ourselves when we heard our eldest, Kyle the Cautious One, let out a spine-tingling scream. It was coming from the main floor and we knew something was terribly wrong. All we could make out was “Daaadddd! Come quick!!!!!!” We both hurried down the stairs, followed by my brother and all of the little boys. I had two more little ones and my brother had two; his daughter and my sister-in-law later claim they never heard anything…hmmm.

When we arrived at the scene of the chaos, Kyle is staring wide-eyed at a mess, saying, “I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!” The bathroom commode had overflowed in the half bath and unlike normal overflows, this time it was like something out of a Bugs Bunny, Road Runner cartoon. It wouldn’t stop! The Sweetheart, ever so Tim-the-Toolman-Taylor-ish, realizes there is more to this than meets the eye, and surmises that something must be going on in the basement.

“To the batpole, Robin!”

So off we all going running to the basement. Now, our beloved two-story over a basement house was the home that The Sweetheart grew up in. His father built it in the early 60’s and when he subdivided his farm in the late 1990’s and built a new home, we came back to town, bought the farmhouse, gutted it, updated most of it and moved in to this beautiful place with seven acres and a pond. A wonderful place to raise My Three Sons.

The basement was finished on one side, the other was a great place for storage and was at one time a workshop for my father-in-law. It was also where the hot water heater, furnace and other necessities were kept. Here is where certain pipes came down the wall…so we all ran into that side of the basement and sure enough, coming out of the huge pipe with the big seal was water leaking like crazy.

The Sweetheart and my brother assess the situation and realize they are going to have to take the seal off.

Now let me set the stage for you: this pipe with seal is at eye-level. So my brother stands with a five gallon bucket while The Sweetheart prepares to remove the seal. The rest of us pajama-clad onlookers wait with anticipation.

Slowly, he begins to try to loosen the seal. It is not easy since it is 40 years old! He works and works until it unexpectedly lets loose with a “POP!” and a mighty rushing river of unmentionables comes gushing down and out the pipe so fast my brother, The Sweetheart and Kyle the Curious One are drenched with, well, you know, ahem…waste water. To put it delicately.

We fill one five gallon bucket and grab for another. The little ones are screaming, “EEWWW, pee-yew! I’m gonna be sick!” “GAG!” Of course they are making it worse than it is, or are they? I rush them out to the other side of the basement where they continue their on-site commentary with giggles and screams.

Kyle the Curious One had the foresight to put on his dad’s old work-boots so he is the designated carrier. He begins his trips to the deep woods to get rid of the evidence and I begin the cleaning upstairs.

The four of us worked most of the night and finally, exhausted, we collapsed in bed for a few hours before dawn. My sister-in-law gets up early to make breakfast wondering what all the mess is downstairs. Really? She seriously never heard a thing! And breakfast? Ugh! Doesn’t sound appealing to me but it doesn’t bother the little blond-haired commentators one bit. They are ready to fill in the details for the few that missed the excitement. They leave out NOTHING.

The work isn’t over. The Sweetheart now must call our Pastor. It is Sunday morning and we should be getting ready for church. But you have heard that old saying, “We have an ox in the ditch”? Well this was one time we had to use it! We still couldn’t operate things normally, the seal was broken and we had to replace it. We were waiting for Lowe’s to open and then he had a long day ahead of him to fix that pipe and seal.

What had happened was, with 25 people in our old house for Christmas dinner, all day long, using our facilities, all day long, it had just taxed our system and backed things up, literally. So when Kyle the Curious One gave it that final flush, that was all it took for it to say, “I’ve had all I can stand and I can’t stand no more!”

Is there a moral to this story? Probably not. Except if you do have an ox in your ditch on the Sabbath, please pull it out. I can imagine the mess if the Pharisees had just left it there.