SMALL BUT SPECIAL MIRACLES

“But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water: and he cried, and said, Alas, master! for it was borrowed. And the man of God said, Where fell it? And he shewed him the place. And he cut down a stick, and cast it in thither; and the iron did swim.” (2 Kings 6:5-6)

This is an amazing story from the ministry of the Prophet Elisha in the Old Testament. As a group of guys were working on a construction project, one man’s axe head flew off and fell into the nearby Jordan River. The guy was quite upset because it was borrowed! I can relate to that sort of thing, because it seems like I have experiences like that all the time. You borrow some guy’s lawn mower because yours is out-of-order, for instance, and then while mowing in an obscure corner of your yard, you hit a large hunk of metal someone threw there and RUIN the borrowed mower! Then, what do you do?! The borrower cried to Elisha. I guess I’d add he probably whined and complained to Elisha, which I probably also would have done! Elisha takes a stick, throws it into the Jordan River, and the axe head swims to the top!

Yes, it sounds like a scene from a Three Stooges movie, but it’s real. It’s was a miracle from God, and it shows that God cares about the little things. For some reason, I tend to get much more excited about such small but special miracles than I do about someone getting healed of cancer or some great miracle. I guess it means a lot to me that God really cares if I lost my car keys, or I can’t find my glasses, or something. I experienced one of those small but special miracles in my life this past weekend. The air conditioner in our church sanctuary (main meeting room) is right now “very temperamental”. It’s fourteen-years-old. The motor and compressor are actually fine, but the problem is that the “touch pad” control panel has gotten all messed up. Sometimes you can touch it and touch it and touch it, and it won’t turn off. Of course, in a case like that, you merely have to unplug it. But other times, no matter what you do, it will not turn on! And, it’s been known to turn itself off every 5-10 minutes. I guess that can be the most aggravating...when I (or someone else) have to keep walking over and “re-turning” it on.

On Saturday, we had our church’s monthly “Day of Fasting and Prayer”. The church is open pretty much all day for people to come and go and pray for the church and for other needs they may have. I arrived at 6:20 in the morning, and attempted to turn the air conditioner on. I must have attempted to turn on the air conditioner a hundred times between 6:20 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., all to no avail. I kept plugging it in and unplugging it. I even punched the touch pad control panel like it was my enemy (oops, I just put that in print, so pretend I didn’t write that!). Nothing worked.

Our “basement sanctuary” doesn’t get as warm as our upper floor does, but during the summer months when the room is full of people, it CAN get up to around 78 in there and become sticky and sultry. The 14,000 B.T.U. air conditioner is actually not powerful enough for the room, but even so, it will get the room down to a pretty comfortable 71 with low humidity. I warned a few people that we’d have no A/C in the sanctuary on Sunday. I began wondering how much it would cost to get a new air conditioner and if that was even feasible.

Each Sunday morning, I go over to the church building very early to make coffee, and check on other matters. I had prayed that God would cause the sanctuary air conditioner to run with no problems for Sunday, but I guess I had little faith. As I touched the “Power” button, I frankly expected no response, as had happened scores of times on Saturday. Instantly, the air conditioner came on! I felt as if I’d just seen the Red Sea part. I was so grateful and so excited!

This reminded me of something that happened over twenty years ago. At that time, our little church was located in another building. When I became pastor, I asked the pastor of the large church where I’d served as an Assistant Pastor if I could have their old copy machine which was just sitting unused in a room. He let us have it! It was wonderful to have that Sharp copier, but there was one “catch” with that machine. Every once in a while, out of the blue, it would freeze and malfunction. There was a long complicated factory code which needed to be entered to “clear” the machine and get it working again. Without that code, you might as well throw the copier into a dumpster! Several times while I was working there at Christian Life Center, the coper froze up. We had to call for service. The service man would come in, enter the 16-digit code, and we’d be back in business. After this happened three or four times, the service man said, “Listen, I’m not supposed to do this, but I’m going to write the code on a piece of paper so you can just punch it in and I won’t have to come out on a service call just for this.” A few times, in fact, we were glad to have that piece of paper!

Well, after a couple of months of happily using that Sharp copier at First Assembly of God of Framingham, one day, I walked in and it was flashing “HL” which meant it was FROZEN and that code had to be entered! The only problem was I DIDN’T HAVE A SERVICE CONTRACT ON THE MACHINE AND I DID NOT KNOW THE CODE. I frantically tried entering all kinds of random combinations. Of course, nothing happened. I was sad. The copier was done for. Then, I did something which many people would consider very foolish. I prayed and said, “Lord, you know I need that code to get this machine to work. I don’t know the code. Would YOU tell me the code?”

I walked up and punched 16 digits in and hit “enter”. The machine turned on!
I did lots of praising of God that day, as I did yesterday!

I know many skeptics will ask why God cares about a lost axe head or a broken down copier or air conditioner but doesn’t heal a little child of cancer, or doesn’t stop a tsunami from taking place. Matters like that are a mystery. I can’t answer them. But I continue to be grateful for small but special miracles!