The Mountain
A small congregation in the foothills of the Great
Smokies built a new sanctuary on a piece of land willed to
them by a church member. Ten days before the new church was
to open, the local building inspector informed the pastor
that the parking lot was inadequate for the size of the
building.
Until the church doubled the size of the parking lot, they
would not be able to use the new sanctuary. Unfortunately,
the church with its undersized parking lot had used every
inch of their land except for the mountain against which it
had been built. In order to build more parking spaces, they
would have to move the mountain out of the back yard.
Undaunted, the pastor announced the next Sunday morning that
he would meet that evening with all members who had
"mountain moving faith." They would hold a prayer session
asking God to remove the mountain from the back yard and to
somehow provide enough money to have it paved and painted
before the scheduled opening dedication service the
following week.
At the appointed time, 24 of the congregation's 300 members
assembled for prayer. They prayed for nearly three hours. At
ten o'clock the pastor said the final "Amen". "We'll open
next Sunday as scheduled," he assured everyone. "God has
never let us down before, and I believe He will be faithful
this time too." The next morning as he was working in his
study there came a loud knock at his door. When he called
"come in", a rough looking construction foreman appeared,
removing his hard hat as he entered. "Excuse me, Reverend.
I'm from Acme Construction Company over in the next county.
We're building a huge new shopping mall over there and we
need some fill dirt. Would you be willing to sell us a chunk
of that mountain behind the church? We'll pay you for the
dirt we remove and pave all the exposed area free of charge,
if we can have it right away. We can't do anything else
until we get the dirt in and allow it to settle properly."
The little church was dedicated the next Sunday as
originally planned and there were far more members with
"mountain moving faith" on opening Sunday than there had
been the previous week!
Would you have shown up for that prayer meeting? Some people
say faith comes from miracles. But others know: MIRACLES
COME FROM FAITH!
Author unknown. If anyone has a proprietary interest in this story please authenticate and I will be happy to credit, or remove, as the circumstances dictate.
Wit & Wisdom - June 4, 1998