Think Outside the Water Bottle

Recently, I was running errands in my Jeep, cruising along and getting my to-do list crossed off. Suddenly, my car made a horrifying dragging sound like I had caught something underneath it!

You haven't lived if you’ve never run over something you shouldn’t have. It’s an interesting experience. One that created serious doubt in me. Was my vision bad? Had I been so tuned out that I ran over something? What didn’t I see? And most importantly, what did I just run over?

My heart raced out of my chest.

I decided to pull over immediately because the other options - like keeping driving - seemed ridiculous. After arriving in a parking lot and getting out of the car, I saw one of those giant water bottles - the kind set up at water coolers in the office workplace - wedged in the underbelly of my car.

No wonder I hadn’t seen it. It was invisible.

Getting on my knees in the parking lot asphalt and dirtying my linen pants, I pulled at it, but it was very stuck. I didn’t carry tools to take care of a situation like this. Did I cut it out? And if so, how? I wasn’t a Girl Scout. All I had was prayer. So that’s what I worked with and said a quick prayer.

Immediately, a sense of peace came over me and I noticed a small parking block in front of me. If I could lift my car, and move forward, the bottle would loosen. I didn’t need to cut out the problem, all I had to do was lift my car.

And that’s what I did. Amazingly, I was also positioned on the incline of a small hill, so as soon as I pulled forward a couple of inches, the behemoth water bottle rolled away, down the hill as if it had never been there. I didn’t even need to drive onto the parking block.

Sometimes, a quick prayer and the willingness to wait for an answer are all we need. Prayer was a quick fix to a situation I wasn’t sure how to remediate; one that quieted my mind while waiting for an answer that had nothing to do with my power, and everything to do with His.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:7, NIV).

Finch Food for Thought: Give peace a chance and let God do the heavy lifting. Literally.