wiggled loose from its wooden handle and sailed into the water,
plopping to the bottom.
[Splash.] [Gasp.]And just like that, he’d lost his cutting edge.The young prophet was horrified. Not only had he lost the
one tool on hand—the most important tool in the toolbox for
moving him toward the outcome he desired—but the ax he’d
been using had been borrowed from a friend. The ker-plunk of
that dead weight in the water was a double whammy of
disappointment and disgust. He couldn’t go forward with his
building project, and now he’d need to go to the person who’d
loaned him the ax and tell what happened to it, that he’d broken
it, lost it, that there was no getting it back.
Notice, though, these encouraging details from the story:Number 1: Despite the lost ax head, the presence of God
was still near. In ancient Israel, Yahweh’s prophets were
representations of His presence and power with His people. So
when the man in this story lost the ax head, the fact that the
prophet Elisha was right there alongside him (v. 3) wasn’t just a
simple comfort. It mattered that Elisha had seen how hard this