When I knocked on my sister’s front door, Karen greeted me with a broom and dustpan in her hand, took me to the kitchen, and told me a story I will never forget.
Only a few minutes earlier, she and three of her daughters had been making breakfast in their tiny kitchen. While they were cooking, someone accidentally left an empty dish on a hot burner. They were working away when, suddenly … BANG! The dish exploded and shards of glass shot through the air.
I looked down at the burn marks scattered over the linoleum floor. On top of each was a hardened drop of what had once been red-hot, molten glass. Then I noticed shards of glass imbedded in the kitchen walls. Those razor-sharp projectiles had shot through the air with such force that they planted themselves deep in the dry wall.
Karen told me she and her children were only a few feet away from the dish when it exploded. I stood, horrified, thinking about what could have happened. Yet my sister was standing next to me, apparently uninjured.
When I haltingly asked, “Is everyone okay?” Karen shook her head and told me everyone was fine. The only injury was a tiny scratch on the back of her oldest daughter’s hand.
Karen has a small “galley” kitchen: a row of cabinets on opposite walls with a narrow walkway in between. I stood in awe trying to figure out how in the world they could have escaped, virtually uninjured, after that dish exploded.
Suddenly, my nieces came bounding through the door. Each gave me a hug and began to tell me about their adventure that morning.
There it was - a kitchen that looked like the crime scene in a slasher movie. And there they were - my nieces and sister - standing healthy and whole, in front of me. I had no doubt that God, in His mercy, had blessed us all with a miracle.
I thanked Him then bent down and picked up two of shards of glass at my feet. Until this day, I keep them in my desk as a constant reminder that the only things that can touch my life are the things God allows.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. God does not always do things the way I would choose. I would not have chosen my father and two sisters to die in an accident when I was fifteen. Sometimes He allows the pain - sometimes He doesn’t. But through the years I’ve learned that He is wise beyond all measure, He loves us more than we can imagine, and He allows only what He can use for our good and His glory in the end.
So when storms of life begin to rage and your hope begins to falter, remember the miracle in my sister's kitchen. I pray that miracle will remind you our God can do absolutely anything. What’s more, everything - yes, everything - that touches you has been sifted through His very wise and very loving hands.
In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary,
you have been distressed by various trials,
so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable,
even though tested by fire,
may be found to result in praise and glory and honor
at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
I Peter 1:6, 7