Running true?

We were away in the caravan this last weekend and I noticed that the front tyre of our “thirdwheeler” was badly worn on one edge. When I stripped off the cover of the towing assembly there were pieces of flat greasy stuff sticking out of the rotating unit. A thing called a “damper” has been broken up and spat out. Worse, the central pin on which the assembly turns, has become slightly bent.

I guess that pin has been through over twenty years of taking the bumps on some fairly rough roads and I shouldn’t be surprised that it isn’t as straight and true as it once was. But even this very small lean away from “true” has virtually ruined a new tyre. There’s more noise than there should be when we’re towing and the van’s been hard to manoevre by hand.

So tomorrow a local engineer will pull the assembly apart again and straighten the pin. It will have to be heat-treated in a gas torch to enable it to be brutally forced back into square. While the unit is apart we’ll check out other components and make sure everything is working as it should. It’s just something that has to be done after a couple of decades of hard work, especially if some regular greasings have been overlooked.

I suppose churches are much the same. It doesn’t take many things “out of true” to upset the balance of things that should normally run smoothly. Ignoring problems can often make matters worse but dealing with them can occasionally involve some uncomfortable heat and pressure. At the end of the day, every member needs to be “straight and true” for the local congregation to be faithful to its calling.