by Deborah Hunter

Created on: April 25, 2008   Last Updated: April 28, 2008

WHAT I LEARNED FROM A DRYER KNOB

I believe God gives us natural examples of his spiritual principles even today. God uses our every day lives to impart to us if we are willing to listen to him. I'm about to tell you a story of how God got my attention with a dryer knob.

Not long ago the knob on my dryer broke. At first I was really upset thinking I would have to buy a new dryer. When I came to my senses I realized that all I really needed was the knob. I returned from the store with the knob in my hand and a dryer full of damp clothes in the basement. I looked at the knob and than at the stem sticking out from the dryer. This was going to be easy. All I had to do was line up the slots and I would be in business.

After aligning the slot on the stem with the slot on the knob I noticed something was not right. In addition to the stem there was a little red arrow on the dryer that indicated the start position. When I lined up the slots the red arrow on the knob did not line up with the red arrow on the actual dryer. Oh no, I thought to myself, what am I going to do now. I tried every way I knew how to make those two arrows line up. This should have taken two second but I had spent at least forty five minutes on the project before I gave up. I just couldn't understand how something that should have been so simple had turned into such a chore. I flopped down on the couch frustrated, contemplating hauling all of my wet laundry to the laundry mat.

Than my daughter came bounding down the stairs, passed me and proceeded into the basement. In a few seconds I hear the familiar hum of the dryer. When she came back up the stairs I was staring at her amazed. Rachel I said how did you get the dry to turn on? I it on, she stated and rand back up to her room.

I ran down to the dryer and looked at the knob. Even though the arrows where still misaligned but the dryer was running. At that moment the words came to my mind, God's ways are not our ways. I thought about all the time I had spent in the basement trying to make the dryer work the way I wanted it to work. How determined I was to make those arrows line up and how in my mind that was the only way things would work was the way I expected them to work.

Then I started thinking about God. How many times had I prayed expecting a certain result? Having my mind made up as to what the result should be even while I was still praying. Did that mean God did not answer my prayer or did it only mean I did not get what I expected? The knob on the dryer was not lined up the way I expected it to be but the dryer worked. The clothes got dry. After all isn't that all I really wanted was dry clothes. Think about it. Have you ever prayed for money to buy food and maybe you did not get the money but someone came to your house and brought you some food? You got what you really needed even thought it was not the way you expected it to come.

God's ways are not our ways. That's why sometimes God gives us things we don't expect or allows us to experience things we would whether not experience. I believe it is his way of preparing us for the things that are coming our way.

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