The Furnace Committee and Other Funny Stories About Worry

I come from a long line of worriers. My grandmother kept a written list of things to fret about, and then she worried about losing the list. Here are a few stories from Cedar Hollow Community Church, where we have turned fretting into a fellowship activity.

The Stove Was Fine

My husband Delbert has never once left the house without checking the stove. On a good Sunday he checks it twice.

Last spring he checked it, got as far as the car, went back to check it again, then sat in the driveway with the engine running and said, “Did I turn the knob or just look at it?”

So he went back in. I sat in the passenger seat and watched our neighbors drive by in their church clothes, one after another, like a parade I wasn’t in.

We pulled into the parking lot just as the congregation was singing the doxology on the way out. Pastor Dawes shook Delbert’s hand and asked if everything was all right at home.

“The stove’s fine,” Delbert said, with great satisfaction.

It certainly was. It hadn’t been turned on since the pot roast in October.

The lesson: Worry adds nothing to our lives, though it can take a whole sermon away. (Luke 12:25)

Weather on the Prayer Chain

Thelma Oakes runs our prayer chain, and for the June picnic she put in a request for sunshine. That was Monday.

Tuesday she called the weather line, didn’t care for what she heard, and called the prayer chain back with an update. Wednesday she updated twice. By Friday she was calling morning, noon and night.

“Forty percent chance at noon,” she told me. “Pray it down to twenty.”

Saturday came up clear and blue, not a cloud from here to the county line. Thelma stood under the pavilion with a deviled egg in each hand and admitted she might have been a little anxious.

The Lord heard from Cedar Hollow eleven times that week. The weather line heard from Thelma nineteen times, and by Thursday it had quit picking up.

The lesson: Ask God as often as you like, but you needn’t send Him the weather report. (1 Peter 5:7)

Grandpa’s Night Shift

My grandson Toby, who is six, stayed with us over spring break and would not go to sleep. Around eleven I found him sitting up in bed, staring at the window.

“Somebody has to keep watch,” he said. “In case of burglars.”

So I sat on the edge of the bed and told him what the Psalm says, that the One who keeps us never slumbers or sleeps. God is up all night anyway, I said, so there’s no sense in both of you losing sleep.

Toby thought it over. “Is that why Grandpa sleeps so good?”

I said yes, that was exactly why.

In fairness, Delbert has kept watch over this house every night for fifty-one years, from the recliner, with the television on. In all that time he has never once been awake for it.

The lesson: God stays awake so His children can rest. (Psalm 121:4)

The Furnace Committee

In September the finance committee met to discuss whether the old church furnace would make it through another winter. Nobody knew, so they scheduled another meeting. Harlan Cobb said a meeting that important ought to have lunch, and the ladies’ circle agreed to cater.

They met seven times. They worried about the furnace over chicken and dumplings, over ham biscuits, and once over a coconut cake so tall it needed its own chair. They prayed about it every time, and then worried some more in case the prayer didn’t take.

The furnace ran all winter without a hiccup. In March somebody finally thought to call a repairman, who looked it over for twenty minutes and pronounced it good for ten more years.

Then the treasurer added up the lunch receipts. Feeding the furnace committee had cost more than the furnace man.

The lesson: The furnace had all winter to break; worry made us pay for it in September. (Matthew 6:34)

Lost and Found

Nora Biggers lent out her good glass casserole dish last fall, the one with her name on masking tape underneath, and by spring she was beside herself. She’d called half the church. At Wednesday night prayer meeting she asked us all to pray it home.

Thelma took her hand and prayed earnestly that the Lord would restore what was lost. She prayed a good long while, for Nora’s peace of mind and the safe return of all borrowed dishes everywhere.

The rest of us had our heads bowed and our eyes open, because that very dish was sitting on the refreshment table six feet away, full of the brownies Nora had brought that night.

Nobody said a word. You don’t interrupt a prayer that’s going that well.

Afterward Nora went for a brownie, lifted the dish, read her own name on the bottom, and announced it was the fastest answer she’d ever gotten.

The lesson: What we fret over is usually closer than we think, and so is God. (Acts 17:27)

My Easter Solo

Six weeks before Easter, the choir director asked me to sing the solo, and I said yes before my good sense could stop me.

Then I worried. I worried about the high note in the second verse. I worried my voice would crack, or my slip would show, or I’d forget the words and start humming like a teakettle. I lost sleep. I asked the prayer chain, and Thelma kept them posted morning, noon and night.

Easter morning a thunderstorm rolled through and knocked the power out ten minutes before the service. No microphone, no organ, no lights. I stood by the window and sang to forty-odd people and a piano, and folks said it was the sweetest thing they’d heard in years.

In six solid weeks of worrying, I never once thought to worry about the electric company. So I’m not even any good at it.

The lesson: I planned for every disaster but the one that came, so I’d do better to trust Him than my own understanding. (Proverbs 3:5)

Who Feeds the Cardinals

Our neighbor Russell Pike fills his bird feeders every morning at six-fifteen and has for twenty years. When his daughter in Tulsa invited him for two weeks at Thanksgiving, he nearly didn’t go.

“Who’s going to feed my birds?” he said. He fretted all through October and finally hired the paperboy, who said yes and then forgot.

Russell came home the first of December and walked straight out to the backyard in his coat to see what was left of his flock.

They were fine. Better than fine. The widow behind him keeps a feeder, and so does the parsonage on Elm Street, and every cardinal in that end of town had simply made the rounds.

Russell said they looked fatter than when he left. He also said they didn’t seem all that glad to see him.

The lesson: If God feeds the birds without our help, He can surely look after us. (Matthew 6:26)

I’ll be praying for every one of you this week, and I promise to leave out the forecast.