The Royal Flush

“God keeps answering my prayers!” my husband said wonderingly. Well, I know it’s true, because almost daily he comes home and tells me how he prayed to make sales, usually when business is dead at the store where he works, and he almost invariably has a good day.

But today he gave me the distressing news that the plumbing in the bathroom was clogged. He plunged with his “plumber’s friend” repeatedly, but to no avail. “I’m going to call Greg and see if he has something in his garage I can use,” he said as he reached for the phone to call our son. Greg told him he had a “snake,” some kind of flexible, coiled plumbing tool in his storage building. Since he was at work, he told Howard to go ahead and get it.

“Come and go with me,” Howard said to me. “Two sets of eyes are better than one. I might have trouble finding it.” But almost as soon as we walked into the large workshop, with tools neatly hanging from peg boards and all manner of projects visible in various stages of completion, he spotted it: a wheel-like device hanging from a hook on the wall. Alas, it didn’t do the trick. Greg suggested he look in his garage for a larger one.

“Did he find it?” Greg asked over the phone a little while after his father left. Just then I saw him drive up.

“He’s getting out, and the trunk is opening, so he must have gotten it,” I told Greg as I looked out the window. He told me to have his dad call him when he came in.

A little later Howard emerged from the bathroom with a triumphant look on his face. “It worked!” he said. I exclaimed how glad I was he found the right tool. “Well, it wasn’t in the garage,” he told me. “I had looked everywhere, and finally gave up. I got in the car and was leaving, when I felt like something was telling me to go back.” He shook his head and continued. “I started to unlock the garage again, when I felt I should look in the carport. I looked around the corner of the garage, and there it was, with the barbeque grill sitting on top of it!”

Praise God! We were spared a plumber’s bill! I told my husband that I’d had a lot of prayers answered, too, usually in the most unexpected way! God is concerned with all our needs, great and small. The Bible says He is an ever-present help in time of need. Hebrews 4:16 says, “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace in time of need.” When your plumbing goes out, you are definitely in a time of need!