Oddly Enough
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008A week ago, our brand new house almost burnt to the ground.
For those of you who hadn’t heard yet, we just moved into a brand new house a little over a month ago and were very excited about it. We had brand new rooms, brand new carpet, doors, paint, and unfortunately, brand new sod which we had to water constantly and consistently.
As with anything, when you water it long enough, it tends to blend together and, unbeknownst to us, our soil was settling rapidly underneath the main electrical meter outside of the house.
We were sitting inside of our house last Sunday evening with our youth group in the middle of our Home Skillet study when all of a sudden, the lights began to flicker. I just thought that it was Duke Energy trying to render power to some other obscure neighborhood after the freak windstorm that we had a couple of weeks ago, and I casually dismissed the flickering.
That was until my neighbor Eric began to knock on my front door forcefully. I answered it and his response was: “Dude, your house is on fire!”
Of all of the phrases you never want to hear in your entire life, that one has to rank up there.
Naturally, my response was immediate. We evacuated the students from our house and I went to take a look at the main electrical meter. The siding around it was completely melted, charred, and black. There were sparks blasting out from under the meter and there was a tiny flame, about the size of a pilot light on a grill, underneath the meter.
Thanks to one of my student’s quick thinking (James) I ran inside and killed the main electrical breaker to the house which extinguished the fire. However, the sparks were still emanating from the main line that comes from the street to our house.
We called 911 (something else I never hope to have to do again) and waited five minutes for the Firetrucks and Ambulances to arrive. Then after they arrived, we had to wait two hours for Duke Energy to arrive and shut off the power at the source.
After careful inspection, they determined that the settling of the soil had dragged the ground wire out of the main electrical meter and unsheathed the ground wire which set off the sparks and ignited some of the siding. The Lieutenant of the Union Township Fire Department told me that the builder had not clamped the meter down correctly, nor left enough slack in the wire for any kind of pressure whatsoever. So, needless to say, the next morning, I lit into (no pun intended) the builder for the mistake which was theirs.
They summarily and very efficiently repaired everything the next day and got our power restored.
Oddly enough, after all was said and done, there was no damage to the structure of the house (thank you God) and, my grandparents were nice enough to take us and all of the food from our refrigerator in for the night.(Again God providing)
God takes care of us more than we know. Jesus was speaking in Matthew 6 and he said this:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
Do not worry. Even when something as big as your house is in danger, God knows what we need and he will take care of us. Oddly enough, we just have to not worry and trust in Him.
Try that this week.
