I ran across a story that I would like to share with you. Tracy Daniels is a sixteen year old daughter of a pastor. She wrote,
One winter night, an unexpected sound woke our household at 3:00 a.m. My father dashed down the hall, sniffing the air. My sister and I scurried to our bed room door. When Dad came back up stairs he said, “I don’t understand it.”
He breathed a sigh of confusion, then returned to his room. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I went to my parent’s room and said to my father, who couldn’t sleep either, “Are you sure? Did you check . . .?”
“Yes, Tracy, I checked everything,” said Dad.
I started back to my room, but as I reached the door, my mother suddenly cried out, “The coffee pot! I think I left the coffee pot on at church.”
Earlier that evening, my mother had served coffee at a church gathering. Now, in an instant, Dad was gone. Mom and I waited at home.
I could tell Mom was terribly afraid that she might’ve been guilty of burning down the church. Ten minutes later my father returned. He let out a relieved sigh and s aid, “The coffee pot was on – it was burned empty and just beginning to smoke. Now I understand.”
And what, a half hour earlier, had awakened us? The smoke alarm in our own house; a house that didn’t have any smoke.
The eighteenth century poet, William Cowper, penned these famous lines:
God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform,
He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.
I like these words because they remind us of the sovereignty of God – whether the story has a happy ending or not; whether the waves are smooth and calm or raging wild and stormy (Stephen Davey in his sermon “The Answer Came Knocking”)
