The Axe That Floated

The school of the prophets was growing and the building they were meeting in was too small.

The young men came to Elisha and said: Let us go to the Jordan and build a larger place.

Elisha said: Go.

One of them asked him to come with them. He said he would.

They went together and began cutting trees by the river.

It was ordinary work. Hot, physical, dusty.

Then one of the young men swung and the axe head came off the handle and fell into the water.

He cried out: Alas, master! It was borrowed.

That detail mattered to him. It wasn't his. Someone had trusted him with it.

Elisha asked where it had fallen.

The man showed him the spot.

Elisha cut off a stick and threw it into the water at that spot.

And the iron swam.

The axe head floated.

Iron. Which does not float. Which sinks every time. Which has no business being at the surface.

It floated.

Elisha told the man to take it up. The man reached out his hand and picked it out of the water.

And they went back to cutting trees.

No celebration. No crowd. No explanation of the mechanics.

Just a young man with a borrowed tool he almost couldn't return.

And a prophet who threw a stick in a river.

And the impossible thing that followed.

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