God Is Awesome

If you read my blog, you know that sometimes I write of my belief in God and my conviction of the truth of His message and His Word, the Bible. Because of this, I believe there are times when we are made aware of supernatural intervention in the expected course of events—sometimes major ones and sometimes not so significant. Today I am certain that I experienced such intervention in a personally major way; although, in the course of world events it was rather insignificant.

I was astonishingly careless and am now fortunate that my house still stands. I believe that it stands because of God’s unsurpassed power and that He gifted me.

This morning, in an attempt to be efficient and because chicken cacciatore tastes so much better after sitting for a while, I decided to prepare tonight’s meal—not my usual approach to meal preparation, let me say. I was beginning by heating a quarter cup of olive oil—which has a comparatively low smoke point before flaming—in a sauté pan. However, about the time I turned the burner on and poured the oil into the pan, I decided that I should complete an errand before starting to cook. Casey had forgotten his lunch and, being the nurturing grandparents that Ken and I are, we decided to take it up to school. At this point, I completely forgot about the oil. We locked the door and left, leaving the burners on.

At school I found tears—from the school secretaries. We are facing an enormous budget crisis in San Diego schools and many people are receiving notices of termination. Having been a school administrator before retiring and unexpectedly resuming parenting, I have faced such crises several times and it always hurts to see good people so devastated. So—I spent time listening to and consoling the women and then commiserating with the principal about the devastating impact the budget cuts will have on the children. I had all the time in the world; my only concern being that I was sure that Ken was becoming bored waiting for me.

I knew there was a problem as soon as I walked through the door to the house. At first I wanted to think that my dirty sun glasses were causing the blur that permeated the air but I really knew that wasn’t true—all this in a 10 second understanding of what had happened. Rushing into the kitchen, through the haze I could see the heat shimmering above and encircling the stove.

I was lucky that the oil hadn’t flashed and that fire hadn’t engulfed our very open style house.

I thank God that He was in charge and allowed my carelessness to not end in the disaster it should have. I am glad that He is an awesome friend.