By Mark Hopper

My wife and I have been married for over 45 years.  We have four adult children and seven grandchildren and another grandchild on the way in November.We have shared many exciting adventures raising four kids and we certainly enjoy making special memories with our grandchildren.

Over the years, we have lived in many different  places including several  apartments and two different houses.  Some had small kitchens and some were a little larger.  But, in all these years, we never owned a refrigerator that had an ice maker.  We made Ice the old fashion way – we used ice trays!

Most of our friends and neighbor’s had refrigerators with ice makers.  We would notice with a touch of envy that our friends always had plenty of ice.  Most of them probably never knew what an ice tray even looked like.

I guess we were a little behind the times!  However, when we remodeled our kitchen last year, we purchased new, matching appliances.  This was a radical step in our married life.  And, the new refrigerator included an ice maker!

I felt like we had finally entered the 21st century.  It only took us 45 year of marriage to have an ice maker of our own!

My wife and I are now empty nesters.  The adult kids are gone and the grandkids visit from time to time.  Our last dog died about a year ago.  So our house is pretty quiet, especially in the evenings.

But, now there is a new sound at our house.  It is the ice maker doing its job.  The sound of the ice maker dumping a fresh batch of ice in the refrigerator is pretty exciting.  When we hear the tumbling sound of fresh ice cubes filling the bucket,  one of us usually makes a comment like “Nice kitchen” or “Nice appliances”!

However, I learned that progress comes with a price.  I discovered that the refrigerator and ice maker has a water filter that has to be replaced from time to time.  The manufacturer recommends replacing the filter every six months.  When I purchased a new filter at Lowe’s recently, I was shocked that it cost over $50!  Ouch!  We never needed water filters when we used trays to make ice.

I wonder how many bags of ice we could purchase for the cost of a new filter? I wonder what we could do with all of the money we would save if we didn’t have an ice maker?  Progress does have a price!

I suppose that I should be grateful and not grumble that we have our own ice maker. There are probably a lot of other people still using ice trays who would gladly replace the filter if they had an ice maker of their own!

Pastor Mark Hopper is from the Evangelical Free Church of Diamond Bar, 3255 South Diamond Bar Blvd.  Sunday services are 9 a.m. and 10:45 a.m.  For more information, call (909) 594-7604 or visit Efreedb.org.