Elevator key is the right answer to an emergency

The odds — everybody has stories of things happening in such a way as to feel almost impossible.

This one arrived as a mystery Amazon package on our porch in May. Though it had his name, my husband had not ordered it. I've since learned there are pranksters who make a game of sending random orders to unknown people.

When he opened it, he had no idea what he was seeing. They were a couple of articulating metal rods. The tag explained them — emergency elevator keys. The very thing we “needed” in our single-level home.

Terry gave one key to our 14-year-old grandson Isaac, who was visiting from Kentucky at the time, thinking he might like it for his collection of gadgets. This is the kid who packed a go bag at age 10 in case he was ever lost in the wilderness. I loved that his bag contained vegetable seed packets — food for the future if he was lost a really long time.

Isaac returned to Kentucky — and was left to go on an overseas trip with Teen Missions International for most of the summer. I assume the elevator key stayed behind, as he traveled light. When he was back home — for a reason unknown to me, except he's a generous guy — he gave the key to his friend. His friend's father was a fellow police officer at Ark Encounter, working with Isaac's dad. This life-sized replica of Noah's ark attracts thousands of visitors each year.

That very evening — with the cleaning crew hard at work after hours — an eight-months pregnant worker became stuck in a malfunctioning elevator within the Ark. A call came through to security — and the two officer dads responded immediately. It so happened that one of the two was in possession of an emergency elevator key. He pulled it from his pocket; they figured out how to use it; and got the trapped woman out.

I can't say what the odds are in this story, but I can imagine they are over the moon. It's an encouraging series of events for me because sometimes I wonder if certain life situations will ever work out. They seem too complex — too many pieces need to fit together. And yet there can be something simple that holds the answer.

Before the elevator key incident, I coined a word for myself—simplexity—meaning to look for God's simple solution within the complex. I had read the story of Jesus being asked to pay the temple tax — a drachma — a Greek silver coin equal to a laborer's daily wage. He told His disciple Peter to “go to the sea and throw in a hook, and take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth you will find a stater. Take that and give it to them for Me and you.” The stater was a standard coin worth four times the drachma.

Most of the Bible's fishing stories involve nets — gathering and sorting many fish. This one is a single hook — for a single fish. Again, the odds impossible to calculate; yet a simple and generous answer for the dilemma.

An emergency elevator key's miles-long journey was the right answer for the moment of need. A fishhook cast into a wide sea — the right answer for the moment of need. Maybe I do not have to feel overwhelmed by my life's complexities. Maybe the simplexity — that simple right solution — is on its way.  

Carol Shirk Knapp is the author of "The Preacher's Kid" column.