Pass the duct tape

neuschwanstein-castle-467116_1280Boy, how I wish I had purchased stock in duct tape!  Not only do they now have this universally revered product in a seemingly infinite array of colors and patterns, but have you seen the bandaids with the same kind of fiber embedded in them?  They’re the BEST!  (And, as a school nurse, I am, after all, a connoisseur of fine bandaids.) Do they even use it for ducts anymore?  I wonder if they took a roll of it into space during the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission; I seem to remember Tom Hanks and his crew using it…

I have discovered, however, a weakness in our beloved duct tape.  It doesn’t like the cold, at least not for long.  It becomes brittle and the adhesive is no longer reliable.  (Ask me how I know.)  The truth is, it’s really only a temporary fix, i.e., it will eventually let you down.  So, right, I can go ahead and use it to shore up the muffler on the old car, but I’d better make it a priority to get the muffler replaced ASAP.

Which is a bit like what some of these “prophets” in Israel were doing just before the Hebrews’ forced exile to the enemy nation of Babylon:

“O people of Israel, these prophets of yours are like jackals digging in the ruins. They have done nothing to repair the breaks in the walls around the nation.”

Okay, so they didn’t have duct tape back then and Ezekiel uses a different analogy. The point is, these false prophets were more concerned about maintaining the status quo than making an authentic fix.  They could not acknowledge the “ruinous” state of their society, blinded as they were by their own selfish satisfaction, making them more concerned with their personal prosperity and comfort zone than the effort it would take to truly fix the problem.

What about our nation, my family, my own heart?

God’s plan is to repair, restore, and renew…not just hand us a roll of duct tape, no matter how fancy it is.

Ezekiel 13:4,5  Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Author: dawnlizjones

Tends toward TMI, so here's the short list: guitar and banjo (both of which have been much neglected as of late), bicycling (ibid), dogs, very black tea, and contemplating and commenting on deep philosophical thoughts about which I have had no academic or professional training. Oh, also reading, writing, but I shy away from arithmetic.

7 thoughts on “Pass the duct tape”

  3. I had a panic yesterday when I found I do not have glue in the house. Duct tape? Yeah, for most things but I wanted to glue M & Ms in a small frame. Not seeing how I could do that with duct tape or packing tape, I start off the get the glue gun. Glue gun? Just in time I questioned my ability to use a hot glue gun on an M & M! I put Elmer’s glue on my grocery list. So some things really can’t be handled by duct tape or a glue gun. Bet you wonder about my project, don’t you? Maybe I’ll share if it turns out to be “bragable.” Or, maybe I will just use the glue gun on M & Ms. I can eat the mess.

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  4. I love duct tape! (I have to run out to the store and replace the tape I just lost.) Yes, our furnace/air conditioner man uses it to seal ducts. But I also use it to keep ants out of the house. We have a deck outside the kitchen that is supported by three metal poles. Ants climb the poles to get to the kitchen. I attach an inch of duct tape to each pole, then reverse the tape and made a ring of sticky tape around the pole to block the ant trail. But I have to replace each ring weekly, sometimes due to rain and sometimes due to dust. J.

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