There is a great debate among modern evangelicals as to whether faith is its own spiritual substance. Does faith cause miracles to happen? Or, in a more benign manner, does it cause God to move, act or show up on our behalf? On the other side, others argue that faith causes nothing, that God is sovereign and moves or acts according to his own will and that all that is necessary is for faith to believe and trust that God is present.
For my part, 6 years of Bible College and 3 years of seminary have left the question open ended for me. I have come to believe that faith and God are mysterious things. The scholastic rationalism that came out of the enlightenment would eviscerate our faith by attempting to dissect our knowledge of God into its smallest parts. Parts of God keep jumping off the table of knowledge, however, and escaping our reason.
So, the answer must lie somewhere in between what we know and the shroud of mystery surrounding the Holy One. In my life, there have been times when God has seemed to work in accordance with my expectations. Then, there are those times when God seems to have worked outside my expectations or despite my expectations. These are the times that God surprises me.
Shortly after our oldest son was born, we moved to Quilcene, Washington. I had accepted a small Assembly of God church’s invitation to pastor. We found an old single-wide mobile home to live in and settled into a life on the rural Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. Logging was the main stay of the economy besides a few Oyster farms around Quilcene and Dabob bays. The church was newly built and most of the people who attended fairly new Christians.
My parents visited us one weekend. So, early on a Saturday morning, we were sitting around the breakfast table finishing breakfast and enjoying coffee. I had just finished making a fresh pot of coffee and poured hot, steaming mugs for everyone. Our son was walking by then and toddling around the kitchen between grandparents and parents.
Suddenly, faster than anyone could react, my son grabbed his grandfather’s coffee mug and pulled it on to himself. He instantly started screaming. I got up to get to him. My wife, Kelly, was already taking off his one piece sleeper that he was still in to get the hot liquid it had soaked up away from him.
I looked him over and noticed that his left forearm was already starting to blister with a big ugly red bubble. So, I picked him up and rushed him over to the kitchen sink, turned on the cold water and ran his arm under the tap. He was still screaming as Kelly checked the rest of him over. It seemed that his left arm, the one he reached for the coffee mug with, was affected the worst.
I continued to run cold water over his arm for many minutes and watched as the blister on his arm grew. I knew from personal experience that this was painful. A few years before I had opened the cap on a radiator of a car and steamed my right arm. I had one blister from my arm-pit to my wrist for many weeks. It took a long time to heal. The pain for the first week was excruciating.
As my son’s cries turned to sobs, he started to wiggle in my arms. I took this as a sign that he was done with the cold water. So, I placed him on the kitchen floor and we looked him over again. There was nothing else that seemed to have burned. Only his left arm still had a big blister.
My dad suggested, “Let’s pray for him.”
So, as a family we gathered around the bewildered little boy and prayed. My dad led in prayer that his arm would heal and that Jesus would take the pain away. Amen. It was as short and brief as just that. Nothing melodramatic. Just a simple prayer.
I remembered that I still had some bandages and burn cream ointment left over from my burn experience. So, Kelly dug it out of the bathroom. We applied a little cream, bandaged the bright red wound with its water-bubbly blister and watched as our son went to the living room to play with toys. Soon, he was lost in his own little world playing and chattering to himself.
Stones in Beckler River, Washington, July 2010 ©Weatherstone/Ron Almberg, Jr. (2010)
Later that day in the early afternoon, we were all outside. Our young son was running around the front yard. He seemed oblivious to the earlier morning events.
“Well, he doesn’t seemed bothered by the burn,” Kelly noted. “His bandage is coming loose, though, I should adjust it before it falls off and he gets it dirty.”
I went over to him and picked him up to take him to his mother.
He watched as his mother unraveled the bandage so that she could re-wrap his arm again. When she got down to the wound, the blister was gone. In fact, there was only a small red spot where it had been before. We looked at each other amazed. Then we called my parents over to look. We were all surprised.
Kelly took the bandage off the rest of the way, cleaned off the burn ointment that was still on his arm and let our son continue to play. We all stood amazed as we watched him chase a ball around the yard as each of us took turns rolling it to him. It seemed like such a small thing and yet such a surprising thing.
So, was it our faith displayed that caused God to surprise us with his grace? Or, was it simply that God enjoys surprising us with his goodness? Maybe both. Either way, we are always surprised.
©Weatherstone/Ron Almberg, Jr. (2010)
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