2 Kings 6:1-5: a reflection

1The sons of the prophets said to Elisha, “See now, the place where we live and meet with you is too small for us. 2Please let us go to the Jordan, and each man take a beam from there, and let’s make us a place there, where we may live.” He answered, “Go!” 3One said, “Please be pleased to go with your servants.” He answered, “I will go.” 4So he went with them. When they came to the Jordan, they cut down wood. 5But as one was cutting down a tree, the ax head fell into the water. Then he cried out and said, “Alas, my master! For it was borrowed.”

As the company of prophets works to build a new place to live, one of them, cutting down a tree by the Jordan, watches in dismay as his axe head flies off and sinks into the water. Alas, my master, he cries, for it was borrowed! It is a small thing, a lost tool, an ordinary practical trouble; but it distresses him, all the more because the axe was not his own. And the prophet Elisha, rather than dismissing so minor a problem, acts to recover it, and the iron floats to the surface.

Notice that God, through his prophet, concerned himself with so small a matter. This was not a national crisis or a great deliverance; it was a lost axe head, a small practical problem in an ordinary day's work. Yet it troubled the man, and God met even that small need. God's care was not too grand to stoop to a minor, everyday trouble; the lost tool mattered to the man, and so it was not beneath God's attention.

That is a quiet comfort for the small troubles of our own lives. We may think that God cares only about the great matters, and that our small, ordinary problems, the lost thing, the practical difficulty, the minor worry, are too trivial to bring to him. But God met the small trouble of a lost axe head; nothing that genuinely troubles us is beneath his care. Bring your small troubles to God, not only your great ones. The God who concerned himself with a borrowed axe head cares about the ordinary, practical difficulties that weigh on you. No trouble that matters to you is too small to bring to the God who cares for you in the little things as well as the great.

Lord, when a prophet lost a borrowed axe head in the water and cried out in distress, you met even that small, ordinary trouble and recovered it. Thank you that your care is not too grand to stoop to the minor, everyday difficulties of my life. I can think that you care only about the great matters, and that my small, ordinary problems, the lost thing, the practical difficulty, the minor worry, are too trivial to bring to you. But you met the small trouble of a lost axe head; nothing that genuinely troubles me is beneath your care. Help me bring my small troubles to you, not only my great ones. You who concerned yourself with a borrowed axe head care about the ordinary difficulties that weigh on me. Let me not think any trouble that matters to me too small to bring to you, who care for me in the little things as well as the great.