The purple thumb drive that stores almost all of the Immanuel Quilt Ministry files—died. The book manuscript, the photos of the quilt, the curriculum, the pattern, the Bingo game, the presentation notes, and the PowerPoint files were gone. And they were saved in no other place.
At the first inkling the thumb drive was about to die, Tom copied the files from the drive onto his work computer and also onto not one, but two, external hard drives. When copying the files, and seeing the folders had been copied we thought all was good. However, after the thumb drive died, and I went to retrieve my files from any of the three locations they had been copied, all that was there were EMPTY folders. It was one of those moments when you cry out to God and remind Him is in the restoration and redeeming business. He was the only hope for bringing the lost back.
I put the dead thumb drive into the computer and took the liberty to remind God that by His breath life is given. I asked that He allow the breath of His Spirit to well up in me, so that I could blow life back into the drive, at least long enough, to get the files secured on a brand new drive.
God heard my prayer and He answered. The thumb drive opened long enough for me to copy every file. Once the task was finished, the purple drive–died again. At that point, it didn’t matter. I was already shouting praises to the Lord for restoring the files back to me. But, the story doesn’t end here.
The following morning, when inserting the new thumb drive into the computer a message popped up on my screen telling me the drive was corrupted. I couldn’t even open the drive! Five-plus years of work gone in a flash—gone in a flash of a flash drive.
I called on my prayer warrior friends and asked them to join me in praying for a resurrection.
I blew into the dead thumb drive, as I had done the day before hoping that God would again bring it back to life. God again answered me with favor. We got it to open only on Tom’s work computer, where we saved every file, opening each to make sure it was saved. We not only copied the files to his work computer, but to his Cloud, two external hard drives, and to two thumb drives!
God retrieved that which was lost.
We prefer these types of incidents not to happen. However, I am grateful we have a God who hears and answers our prayers. That He is the One who rescues, restores, salvages, and revives the dead…with the breath of His Spirit.
The rescue, revival, and resurrection are to bring us back into the intimate presence of God. Hallelujah and Amen.
“The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” –Luke 19:10