Don’t let today’s title throw you off. Today’s topic is not about wedding ceremonies but about other borrowed things. It is also the theme of the bible study I am currently presenting to our Spanish Bible class at church. Has this ever happened to you?: You borrow something, say a chain saw, lawn mower, trimmer, or something else, and then it breaks while you’re using it. It’s a distressing feeling, right? It happened to me once and I won’t soon forget it. In fact, I wound up buying my friend a brand new chain saw because of it. 

       In the 6th Chapter of 2 Kings, we find the story of a poor man who had borrowed an axe from a friend and while he was cutting down a tree, the axe head flew into the Jordan river and sank to the bottom. Those of you who are familiar with that story know that in the end, God used the prophet Elisha to help the man recover the axe head. Obviously, it was a miracle because iron does not float. However, I want to focus on the reaction of the man to whom this happened. Verse 5 reads: “As one of them was cutting down a tree, the iron axhead fell into the water. “Oh no, my lord!” he cried out. “It was borrowed!” I trust you can recognize that this poor man was mortified. You see, being a student in the school of the prophets he was obviously a poor man. He knew it would be no easy task to buy his friend a new axe. I’m sure you and I know some people who would have reacted very differently this had happened to them. They would have blamed their friend for lending them a cheap and worthless axe or else they would have found someone else to blame.

       How do you perceive borrowed things? Regarding this subject, the great bible Commentator, Matthew Henry, wrote: [“Note, we ought to be as careful of that which is borrowed as of that which is our own, that it receives no damage, because we must love our neighbor as ourselves and do as we would be done by.”] Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe that we should be more careful with borrowed things than with our own things. I believe this way because, when you stop to think about it, just about everything we have in life is borrowed. Our time, health, gifts, talents, abilities, spouse, children, etc. We have received all these precious things from God and He can and will call for them when He sees fit. With broken hearts and trembling lips, God loving and God fearing people everywhere will always thank Him for the time He let them have the loved ones He eventually calls back. One more thing: The way you use, treat, and handle something borrowed is a reflection of what you think of the one you borrowed it from.

God’s word for today (Job 1:21) “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord.”