27 June 2007
My quiet time with the Lord today was simple but, AWESOME!
Seriously, I’m still reeling from it.
Some of you (who read the post last week, entitled, ‘Out of the Overflow’) already know that I’m currently going through the book of 2 Kings. Here is the passage I read this morning,
1 One day the group of prophets came to Elisha and told him, “As you can see, this place where we meet with you is too small. 2 Let’s go down to the Jordan River, where there are plenty of logs. There we can build a new place for us to meet.”
“All right,” he told them, “go ahead.”
3 “Please come with us,” someone suggested.
“I will,” he said. 4 So he went with them.
When they arrived at the Jordan, they began cutting down trees. 5 But as one of them was cutting a tree, his ax head fell into the river. “Oh, sir!” he cried. “It was a borrowed ax!”
6 “Where did it fall?” the man of God asked. When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it into the water at that spot. Then the ax head floated to the surface. 7 “Grab it,” Elisha said. And the man reached out and grabbed it. 2 Kings 6:1-7
Do you see it?
I’ve read this passage countless times and haven’t seen all the richness and application that I saw this morning. But if you look real carefully, you can see some wonderful lessons for this group of prophets and for us today as well.
First of all, never give in to that nagging suspicion you sometimes have that God is too busy to care about the seemingly small and insignificant, day to day stuff in your life.
What could be less significant than the lose of an axe-head?
Yet, these ancient seminary students seem pretty worked up about it. Back then (much like today) seminary students didn’t have much money. Believe me, I know this first hand. So they took nothing for granted. The axe was borrowed, so it would need to be returned.
Back then, picking up an axe was not exactly as easy as a quick trip to Home Depot either. Metal working was still relatively new, and certainly not available to the common man. This axe would have been worth its weight in gold!
It would have been like a seminary student borrowing someone’s car today to go down to lake Norman with his buddies to baptize some folks. Unfortunately, in the young theologians zeal to start dunking, he rushed off, leaving the Mercedes in neutral, on a hill, facing the lake, with a 25 mph wind blowing downhill!
Long about baptism 38, everyone hears an enormous splash, followed by that slow, Titanic-like decent into the murky waters of lake Norman.
The Mercedes is no more.
Fortunately, their very godly professor of Systematic theology is there and feels a bit sorry for them.
Where did it go in? he very calmly inquires.
Over by the dock where we parked it! They seminarians cry in unison.
Almost routinely, professor Bob breaks off a crape myrtle limb from a near by specimen and tosses the branch into the lake at right about the same spot where the orchestra played as the car slipped quietly below the surface.
He then unfolds his lawn chair, pulls out one of his favorite books (a quick read entitled, The Lost Art of Biblical Hermeneutics as it Relates to Supralapsarianism and Today’s Young Soteriologists) and waits for God to move.
He doesn’t have to wait long, which perturbs him a bit because he was just getting to his favorite part—the section on dispensationalism and how many of these unique administrations are actual dispensations or merely short pauses in the unfolding of God’s eschatological tapestry.
Oh well, there would be plenty of time for pure, unbridled adventure after they took care of this tiny problem regarding the German luxury automobile.
Do I need to go on?
The car surfaces (completely dry), hovers on over to the parking lot, and starts right up on the first try!
Point?
God cares about the little stuff!!
He’s not too busy (what, exactly constitutes ‘too busy’ for an omniscient God anyway?)
He does care.
Yes, even about the small things.
But remember, what’s small to you may not be small to someone else, and God knows the difference.
An axe means very little to me. I’ve got one laying out in the garage, and I never even use it. I prefer tackling the situation with a chainsaw.
A borrowed Mercedes on the other-hand?
That would make me sweat a bit.
So why doesn’t God always move like he did with this zealous group of young prophets/seminarians?
Because, as important as that axe-head was to them, the growing and stretching of their faith is more important.
Would they still love and trust God if Elisha offered no support whatsoever?
Would they still attend the new (not even built yet) seminary under his leadership or would they go off and form another?
Would they lay out ultimatums to God like, Either You show me something (like bringing that axe-head to the surface) or I’m finished serving you! Or would they trust him and forge on?
Would they—
Well, you get the idea.
Would they?
Would you?
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I have a friend who put some jewelry that had been her grandmother’s in a “safe place” and then, of course, forgot where that place was. She cam e to our small group and said she felt silly asking for prayer for this jewelry - it really had little if any monetary value. The items were sentimental to her. We told her that God cares even for that. She said that she still felt silly asking for that when so many had “bigger” issues. We prayed for it anyway. A year later she found the jewelry wrapped up in her workout clothes in the back of her closet. She said to me that if she had obeyed God and her doctor and worked out for her heart she never would have “lost” the jewelry. Not only did God care about her heart but her showed her that he cared about her “heart” for her family.
How often do I think - oh that is such a little thing, I don’t need to bother God about that. But I would tell my husband or a friend. If it is important enough to say to a human being how much more so is it to say to my Father who cares more for me then any human!