God of the Empty Ink Cartridge

At the card shop in which I work, my blessed ability to understand and enjoy working with computers has afforded me the God-sent responsibility of doing our in-store print jobs (invitations, cards, etc.) and managing the store's website. Lately, I've been seeing the glory, grace, and love of God in the smallest things, including my work at the back computer while printing invitations.

Today, as I printed a woman's invitations for her husband's birthday party, a notice appeared on the screen informing me that the print job had been paused. The cause, the screen informed me, was the yellow ink cartridge, which had apparently run out of ink. The notice said I could continue to print and ignore the yellow ink, or replace the cartridge before resuming printing. It also informed me that printing without replacing the yellow ink cartridge could cause permanent damage to the printer. It seemed the computer was trying to tell me that I should quit the job and replace the ink.

There was only one problem. We had ordered replacement cartridges in the middle of last week, and they still had not arrived. I had no more yellow ink to replace the spent cartridge with. This isn't what most people would consider a between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place situation, but for a person whose main purpose at work involves printing, and printing means yellow ink, it could be a very stressful situation.

Yet I was not stressed. I calmly pressed the resume print button and worked to finish the order. I did it without hesitation or worry.

The more computer-savvy out there probably realize that I perhaps shouldn't have done this. The printer told me blatantly that continuing to print without the yellow ink cartridge replaced could cause permanent damage to the printer. I was thinking about the now, and the printer was telling me to think about the future. To be honest, a week ago I would have been stressed out, sitting and debating whether or not pressing that "resume" button was really the wisest choice.

In fact, a week ago I was stressed out, debating whether or not pressing the resume button would cause catastrophic damage to our printer, prevent me from doing my job, destroy the computer, ruin a customer's print order, lose me my job. I worried and fretted over this issue just one week ago. And now I was calm. Why?

Because from that day forth, the printer has continued to say that the yellow ink is gone, and I have continued to print orders with no trouble at all.

It's been a week since the yellow ink apparently ran out, and yet I have printed more than one order since that time that heavily relied on yellow ink. It has been my oil in the empty jar experience; my bread and fish moment of faith, if you will.

I don't think God always means for us to take these small things as signs of divine intervention; it could be that the printer simply couldn't read the yellow ink cartridge, and only thought the ink was gone. But I honestly believe this has been a moment in which God has said to me, "Believe in me, and I will do it for you." I find it hard to believe that a God who can heal the sick, bring the dead back to life, and forgive all our sins centuries before we've done them through an ancient act on a cross could not perform a small modern miracle like sustaining an ink supply where the world (or the printer) tells me no ink is to be had.

This is all a long note to say something very simple: Faith in God, believing in him, can result in big, and small, miracles. There's nothing beyond him-- not illness, not inkwells. God is a moment-by-moment bringer of grace and sustainer of our lives. He sends the sun to shine and make us joyful, or rain to water our flower beds. He sends the smile of a baby our way to brighten our days, or a funny joke on the radio to remind us that the world will be okay again. He uses an empty ink cartridge to remind us that nothing is impossible for those who believe in God's promises, no matter how silly it may be to believe that God is sustaining your inkwell. It may seem silly, but I believe it with my whole heart-- God is in the details, the small things . . . All the empty ink cartridges in the world sing praises to our mighty, loving ( and clearly sense-of-humored) God!