"Protected"

 

“Protected”

 

In April we had a new water heater installed. That probably doesn’t sound too earth-shaking, especially since it replaced the one originally put in the house when it was built in 1990, but the way it came about shows God’s loving hand over us and our property.

A couple of days before we acquired our new appliance Karen had gone into the garage to take something out of the freezer. She smelled something strange and as she looked round she saw smoke coming from cracks in the heater wall and a few seconds later fire broke out. She called me, I turned off the circuit breaker and put the flames out with a home fire extinguisher we never thought we’d have to use, Karen called 911 and the Fire Department showed up a few minutes later, cooled the affected area down and made sure there were no other issues, Meanwhile several neighbors gathered and (with us) were relieved that all was OK. We thanked the firefighters and later in the afternoon dropped off Karen’s homemade chocolate chip cookies at the fire station (minus a few she left at home). To quote the “Bard”, “All’s well that ends well”.

Here’s the rest of the story. The incident took place when we were home. An hour before we were out running errands. And it occurred during the day, not at night when we could have been injured or killed. Besides these, we were scheduled for a ten day trip two weeks later and could have lost our house before the fire was discovered. A verse (paraphrased) from God’s Word comes to mind: “”…He who watches over Jim and Karen will neither slumber nor sleep.” (Psalm 121:4).

Why God chose to protect our home from burning down and why He allowed my cousins Murry and Vicky to lose theirs during the Louisiana floods in 2016 I don’t know (see the posting “In the Midst of the Storm”) and likely never will this side of Heaven. What’s our responsibility in return? Again let me adapt Scripture: “Your love, God, is our song, and we’ll sing it! We’ll forever tell everyone how faithful you are.” (Psalm 89:1, TM).

We have no way of knowing how God has protected us from auto accidents, critters like snakes and gators, storms, COVID and many other possible tragedies. We can only thank God that (in my words) “…He has not treated us as our sins deserve or repaid us according to our iniquities.” (Psalm 103:10). To cite a line from an old gospel song, “What mercy, what love and what grace”.

 

Grace and Blessings!

Jim McMillan (with helpful input from Karen)