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Copyright © 2006
by Faithnet, Inc.
The Faithnetworker Newsletter
Vol. 4. No. 4, November 4, 2003
http://www.faithnet.org

Angels

Cool Scripture Cite

"Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it." (Hebrews 13:2)

Hot Internet Site

AngelHaven.com offers many resources for angel lovers and angelic hearts. You can chat with other angel mavens, view angel art, and even send Angel Grams to your favorite persons.

http://www.angelhaven.com

The Powder Monkey
Mark Sibley Jones

It was a dry year. What few creeks there were in Comanche county were dry as bone meal. Granny Brown, looking out her kitchen window, could see big long cracks furrowing the earth around her little frame house.

Granny Brown was a big woman, nearly six feet tall. Standing head strong above the men of Comanche county, she scratched out a living from her garden and by delivering babies. She was always delivering something--babies for sure. But, she also delivered more than a few lives with her home spun remedies and common sense medical care.

Water was getting hard to deliver. Nowadays it took long trips into town to fetch a barrel full. That was barely a week's worth of washing and cooking, and a little for the chickens.

She had hands like a man's, calloused from her shovel. The dirt broke slowly under her toil, but she was determined to dig herself a well. That shovel and her apron were the only tools she had. One side of the pit was straight down like a basement wall, while the other side was a foot-printed ramp up which she carried her apron loads of dirt.

Chink, chink, the shovel stung her blistered palms as she hit solid rock. No water; just bedrock. The last apron load left the well's bottom clean . . . and dry.

I never heard what may have gone through her mind when she hit that rock. A woman of faith, she knew perseverance. But, did she curse out loud a prayer of downright disappointment? I imagine that later that evening, she had a soulful talk with her Lord. One of many talks, I expect.

No use weeping over that durn hole in the ground. There were babies to midwife into this hard life, feverish brows to cool, and water to haul.

He was sitting on the porch when she rode up and dismounted her mule. Men like him came through occasionally, trying to make their way to family or jobs. His eyes darted between Granny's steel grey eyes and the promising moisture around the lip of her water barrel.

The Brown hospitality was legend in those parts, so it was no surprise that the man found a decent meal and a soft bale of hay for a bed that evening. Before he was to leave the next morning, Granny called him inside for some fried eggs and grits.

"What's that big old hole you got there, Ma'am?"

"That's my well," she replied. "But I hit bedrock."

"I can fix that, if you don't mind unsettling your house a bit."

"Fix that?" She turned with a confused grin. "Now, how would you fix that rock?"

"I'm a powder monkey."

Powder monkeys were rare birds indeed. Not many men wanted to be around dynamite, much less tamp it into drilled holes. Granny Brown once attended the death of a rail road crewman who got his leg blown up with dynamite.

Sure enough, the powder monkey was carrying the tools of his trade right in his sack. By the time the sun got high that day, he had poked a hole in that rock and tamped it with dynamite. It didn't look like much, but when he set it off, that rock busted up into about nine pieces. And up through those cracks came water.

Isn't it providential how we find prayers' answers in the needful places of other folks' lives?