God, the Antidote to Murphy's Law

A few months ago, I was heading down the stairs at my condo when my keys fell out of my pocket and crashed to the concrete below.

My key fob burst open and parts scattered everywhere.

I paused, closed my eyes and let out a long sigh.

I gathered up all the pieces, put the fob back together again and pointed it at my car.

Nothing.  It was dead.  Because of course it was.

Now here’s the thing, like many cars these days, my car has a keyless ignition.  Yes, there’s a hidden key in the fob which will allow me to open the door, but there’s no place to put the key to start the car.

And a new key fob costs hundreds of dollars.

But, as I would later read online, there is, supposedly, a special spot inside the car, where if you place the fob, even if the battery is dead, the car will start.

So I stuck the key in the door to unlock it … and the car alarm went off.

Because of course it did.

And I had chosen to do all this at five o’clock in the morning.

Because of course I did.

Fortunately, I had a backup fob.  I raced back upstairs to my condo, got the spare fob and shut off the alarm.

Murphy’s Law, right?  Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.

The Disney Channel currently produces an animated show entitled “Milo Murphy’s Law,” about a boy who, as he explains in the very first episode, is a bit of a jinx.

For example, in that first episode, Milo is standing at the bus stop with the new kid, Zack, when a bungee cord flies through the air and lands at Zack’s feet.  Zack comments that the bungee cord looks like something used to hold things down at a construction site and no sooner are the words out of his mouth when a gigantic concrete piling comes rolling down the street heading right for Zack and Milo.

Zack and Milo manage to outrun the piling, taking cover in a mud pit, but they miss the bus.

Milo says not to worry, he knows a shortcut that will get them to the next bus stop on time.  But his phone and consequently his GPS aren’t working having gotten wet in the mud.

Again Milo is unfazed, pulling out a paper map from his backpack.

But just then a bird swoops down and grabs the map from his hand.

Milo suggests another shortcut, this time through the rock quarry, but when they arrive at the quarry they find it a mess thanks to an oil spill.

Again Milo has come prepared, pulling out galoshes for himself and a spare pair for Zack so they can wade through the ooze.

But just then the bird, still carrying the map in its talons, grazes the powerlines.  A spark jumps to the map, setting it on fire.  The bird screams and drops the map, which lands in the oil spill, setting it ablaze.

So Milo suggests they run through Coyote Woods instead and tells Zack not to worry that the woods are named after actor Peter Coyote … who turned the woods into a wolf preserve.

Really the premise of “Milo Murphy’s Law” could have turned the show into the most depressing cartoon ever created, but thanks in part to the voice acting of Weird Al Yankovic as Milo, but mostly due to the relentless optimism of Milo, the show is really a gem, as clever and hopeful as its main character.

Milo knows that every day, the worst thing that can possibly happen to him will happen to him, and yet he still gets up every morning.  He still pushes on without complaint.  Milo Murphy doesn’t know what self-pity is.

In today’s reading from 2 Kings 6:1-7, we get the Old Testament version of Murphy’s Law.  The company of prophets approaches Elisha asking for permission to build a bigger meeting place.  The term “company of prophets” or “sons of prophets” in other translations refers to this guild of prophets, an organization, if you will, of prophets.

Anyway, Elisha gives his permission and accompanies them—fortuitously—to the Jordan so they can cut down some trees, at which point, one of the men loses his axe head, when it falls into the water.  And, as if that were not bad enough, it turns out the axe had been borrowed.

Can you picture him?  Can you see him, grabbing his head, pulling out his hair?  He’s lost his axe—no he’s lost another man’s axe.  He’s in serious trouble.

But then Elisha is there.  “Where did you drop it?” he asks the man.  The man points, Elisha drops a stick into the water, and the axe head floats to the surface.  I actually like the King James translation which says, “the iron did swim.”  Now that’s an image.

Elisha tells the man to retrieve the axe head.  Crisis averted.

Think about this for a second … if you can imagine this, if you can picture this whole story in your head, if you can feel the despair and anxiety and fear that man felt when he lost his axe, you are connecting with someone who lived literally thousands of years ago.

That is one of the amazing things about the Bible—that it can show us, in perhaps both a positive and unfortunately negative way, that we are still the same people.  We are still God’s people.  We are still His children.

The important thing about this story is that—first of all—we relate to the man who dropped the axe head into the water, but also that we understand and recognize the importance of Elisha’s presence there.

Remember I said earlier how fortuitous it was the Elisha was there—well, not so fortuitous, there was nothing lucky about it.  The prophet’s guild asked Elisha to be there, not necessarily because they prophesized that someone would drop their axe into the river, but because they expected that something would go wrong.

There was no way everything would go right, so they asked Elisha, he with the direct line to God, to come with them, just in case.

They invited, in essence, God to make this journey with them.

It is sometimes very easy to read Old Testament stories like these with floating, swimming chunks of iron and dismiss them.  They seem too fantastical.  Or even if you do, one hundred percent, buy into this miracle actually happening, you dismiss it because miracles just don’t happen like this in today’s world.

Of course, you’d be wrong if you thought that.

Miracles happen in this world every day.

And if we begin to look at miracles as any time that God has intervened in our lives, who among us, looking back over our lives, can say that God has NEVER made His presence known to us?

Who among us would dare to say that?

Why is it so easy to recognize the presence of Murphy’s Law in our lives, but so difficult to acknowledge that God is the antidote to Murphy’s Law.

Murphy’s Law is simply a name we give to the bad things that seem to always pop up in our lives.

But how often do we experience the inverse?

How often do things seem to go just perfectly?

Maybe not often, but sometimes things do just fall into place.  Sometimes things fall into place with such precision and perfection, it doesn’t even seem possible.

These are miracles.

These are from God.

The thing that the prophet’s guild did right and the thing that we need to remember to do, is they invited God to walk with them.  They invited God into their lives.  They knew that something might happen that would be completely beyond their control—completely beyond their ability to fix, and so they brought God along.

And God took care of it.

Whenever someone brings up Murphy’s Law to my dad, he always smiles and says, “And remember Murphy’s Corollary.”

I texted him the other night to help remind me what Murphy’s Corollary is.

If Murphy’s Law is whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, Murphy’s Corollary says this, “And remember Murphy was an optimist.”

Take a moment today and reach past the cynicism of the world and look to God.

Miracles are not something that happened once upon a time.

They are happening today, right now.

God is with us.

Look to Him.

Amen.