Rev. Tony: The answer was right in front of me

By Tony Marciano

Several years ago, my sister bought a house that came with stainless steel appliances. The stove, refrigerator and microwave all matched. In her previous home, she had a white refrigerator with French doors and a bottom freezer. It was fairly new. She kept the stainless steel appliances and gave me her white refrigerator.

At my house, we played the musical game of moving my refrigerator to my mother’s side of the house, and my wife and I took my sister’s refrigerator.

We were grateful. It was an expensive refrigerator. But this particular manufacturer had a design flaw. The defrost feature didn’t work and the components behind the back wall filled with ice. Also, the tray below the vegetable crisper filled with ice. My wife took out a huge slab of ice from the refrigerator. A year later, we had the same experience. One time we unplugged the refrigerator and let it defrost. All our food was moved to my mother’s refrigerator. Some went outside since it was January. It was a tedious task; one I didn’t enjoy.

I avoided defrosting it for two years. The past January, I noticed the shelves in the refrigerator were frozen in place. The ice developed behind the wall. My wife and I were about to unload the refrigerator and unplug it. Since I didn’t want to do that, I Googled solutions to this problem.

Many people said it is a great refrigerator except that it has this design flaw. Defrost didn’t work. Ice formed under the vegetable crisper. It reminded me of the refrigerator my mother bought in the 1950s that didn’t have a self-defrost feature on it. When you opened the freezer, ice formed around the cooling metal.

I found a YouTube video that explained how to address it. There were two buttons on the machine that you pressed simultaneously for 14 seconds. The screen changed and it showed various options. The first was a quick freeze. The second and third were deeper freezes. The fourth was the defrost mode. When you clicked that, the machine shut off and defrost began to function. I tried it. For 45 minutes, our refrigerator went through the defrost mode. Finally, it restarted. I removed a sheet of ice under the vegetable crisper.

Thinking I had solved the problem of ice, I didn’t. Several months later there was another sheet of ice under the crisper. I removed it and defrosted the machine. The next week more ice and I defrosted the machine. Over the last two months, I have defrosted the refrigerator every Saturday. Every week I have removed ice from under the vegetable crisper. But I’ve noticed that each week, the sheet of ice is getting smaller and smaller.

I never received an owner’s manual when my sister gave me the refrigerator. I did what you normally do; plug it in and put food inside of it. This machine needed a little loving tenderness to make it work effectively. The answer was always there; I just didn’t know it.

The same could be said of our lives. We’re born and thrust into life, growing up into adulthood, taking our cues from others. The owner’s manual is God’s Word. There, He shows us how to really live so that when we get to the end of our days, we don’t ask for a do-over. It was good. It was a life lived without regrets.

Let me encourage you to read the Bible. Perhaps start in the Gospel of John. Notice chapter 10, verse 10. It contains a promise for you and me.

I’ll be back in two weeks. Until then, live well my friend.

The Rev. Tony Marciano is the president/CEO of the Charlotte Rescue Mission. He is available to speak to your group. Go to www.charlotterescuemission.org and go to contact us- just ask for Pam.