Iron doesn’t float. Does it?
- What is the meaning of the name of your website “When Iron Floats.com”?
Short Answer:
The task of missionaries is monumental and our ability to enter full-time missionary service will be a work of God that will feel as miraculous (to us) as a hunk of iron floating to the top of a river. (2 Kings 6:6)
Long Answer:
When we started this journey towards full-time missionary work, Dave told me, (Amanda) that transitioning into full-time ministry, with all the challenges and obstacles, would be nothing short of an amazing miraculous work of God, akin to that once-upon-a-time (about 3,000 years ago) when a lump of iron floated.
As we all learned when we were children, iron does not float in water.
But God has a funny way of taking “no and never” and turning them into “yes and now.” And so, around 850 BC, right when one man really needed it most, a chunk of iron floated. You can read the account in 2 Kings chapter 6 where, rather nonchalantly, the Bible tells us an odd little story about some men who had an accident while chopping trees. Here’s the “Amanda Story Book” edition:
One day, Elisha, the prophet of God, was hanging out with a group of men who were called, “sons of the prophets.” Despite their name, they were not in fact the sons of any prophets. They were more like disciples of the prophets—men who wanted to know and follow God, and so followed and learned from God’s prophets.
Apparently this particular group had gained new members or something and had outgrown their dormitory. So they asked Elisha for permission to build themselves some new rooms, and Elisha told them to hop to it. Off they all went on a logging expedition, bringing Elisha with them. (Hey, if you can, always bring a prophet of God along on your excursions!) As they chopped away, one man’s axe head flew off the handle and landed in the river. The man watched in horror as it sank beneath the water. This man was not rich. He didn’t even own that axe. He had borrowed it and could not afford to replace it!
Elisha heard him call out “Alas!” and came to investigate. When he understood what happened, Elisha threw a stick in the river where the axe head had disappeared and up popped the axe head like a cork, floating over to where the man could reach out and grab it. And he did. The End.
Possibly due to my (Dave now) personal experiences with woodworking—this story has always piqued my curiosity.
Admittedly it’s a bit of a head scratcher because the text provides no commentary on its inclusion in scripture. Even context from adjacent passages provides minimal insight. In the process of researching the story for this article, I found this article by Stephen Witmer. Witmer said:
“The story that comes just before this one is about a great man, a Very Important Person: Naaman, the commander of Syria’s army. And the passage that immediately follows is about an even more important person: Naaman’s boss, the king of Syria himself.”
The people in this story aren’t big and important, we don’t even know their names. What we do see in this story is that the small problems of small ordinary people matter to God.
Witmer goes on to say:
Psalm 147:3–4 says that God “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.” God does big things, like creating and naming the stars, and little things like binding up the wounds of sad people.
This reminds me of the dark sadness and great fear of the Kwakum people and their deep need for the Gospel. They aren’t a people of great importance or of great numbers—but God, in His mercy, has died so that they could be redeemed. He cares about them, and we look forward to the day when we will be able to serve alongside Dave and Stacy Hare (You can read about them here) and minister to the Kwakum.
God meets the needs of His people in a variety of ways that usually fall into two categories: Our work and His work.
Generally, God meets the needs of His people through a lot of hard work on the part of His people. When we need houses we go chop boards, we don’t sit and stare at the trees. But as we walk through our ordinary lives, doing our ordinary work, we face circumstances and problems that we just can’t fix on our own. Our axe heads fly off. In these times God often works in excitingly supernatural ways.
Reaching the Kwakum with the Hope of Christ is a task that fits nicely into both these categories.
To me, (still Dave) much in this story highlights these means of meeting needs, and curiously parallels our journey towards full time ministry in 2 ways:.
- Just like the young men building their physical dormitory as a base for their learning and ministry, we also have a great deal of planning, work and travel to build the physical, spiritual and financial partnerships we need as a base for our ministry.
- Just as they watched the axe head float miraculously to the surface—with God’s glory on full display—we are watching God open the doors of His storehouse through the generosity of you His people. As we work, God is building a team of faithful prayer partners and committed financial donors who support the ongoing Great-Commission Gospel ministry. We can faithfully ask others to join us, but God is the only one who can stir the hearts of His people. Watching Him build a team with us is exciting and wonderfully displays His glory.