Tender Mercies of the Lord

Recently when I walked from our kitchen into the garage to retrieve an ice cream sandwich from the freezer, the words of David Bednar came to mind. In regard to an unlikely experience that some would count as happenstance but to which he attributed to God, he said, “Some may count this experience as simply a nice coincidence, but I testify that the tender mercies of the Lord are real and that they do not occur randomly or merely by coincidence.” Standing there in the garage, as I pawed through stacks of frozen food in search of a tasty treat, I experienced a tender mercy of my own.

Over the years I had retrieved things from that same freezer a thousand times. But this time, it occurred to me that I was experiencing something unusual. It was more than unusual. All considering, it was truly amazing. What were the odds? One in a million? The chance of winning a lottery couldn’t be much higher.

The explanation dates back 57 years to Louisville Kentucky, soon after the opening of General Electric’s “Appliance Park”. This was the first facility to manufacture appliances that later became common, such as the self-cleaning oven and through-the-door ice and water dispensing refrigerators. The plant is still in operation today. Since opening in 1952, it has spit out more than 185 million appliances. One of the first was a food freezer, model 1HC-11-LC1. Thousands of the units rolled off the production line. One was trucked to Chicago where it was purchased by a short thin woman, Elizabeth Gustainis, who was only one generation removed from her Lithuanian roots.

Initially, the freezer served time in Elizabeth’s home in Addison, Illinois. A few years later it moved to her family’s beach house on the shore of Lake Michigan where it purred away on hot summer days, dispensing frozen treats to Elizabeth’s visiting grandchildren. At the age of 19, when many of its siblings from the Louisville plant were undoubtedly being replaced with newer models, this freezer moved to Houston Texas where Elizabeth lived with her son’s family. Ownership of the freezer unofficially passed to the next generation when Elizabeth’s son moved it to Scottsdale Arizona in 1978. In 1982 at the age of 26, the freezer passed to yet another generation when Elizabeth’s granddaughter took possession in Phoenix, Arizona. When she and her family moved to California in 1992, the freezer’s resume boasted 15 years defying sweltering desert heat in stuffy confines of hot Arizona garages. Over the next 19 years, as it journeyed from West Coast to East Coast and back again, the freezer survived the upbringing of five of Elizabeth’s great grandchildren.

Today the freezer sits in my garage in Newberg, Oregon, full to the brim. It quietly purrs away, just as smooth and functional as it did when it began life 57 years ago, uncomplaining, performing its silent duty with a load of ice cream, frozen berries, waffle fries, roasted chicken, and chocolate fudge 3-layer cake. Each time that my granddaughter Jenika, who is Elilzabeth’s great great granddaughter, enjoys an ice cream sandwich from its depths, it marks the fifth generation which this family heirloom has served.

Like the freezer, our faithful dog Yodi prefers to spend most of her time in the garage. Anyone making a trip to the freezer is greeted by her wagging tail. At 16 years of age, she is 112 in dog years. That’s an impressive number, but it pales in comparison. If the average life span of a kitchen appliance is ten years, the freezer that Elizabeth Gustainis purchased 57 years ago is now 445 years old in appliance years. That in itself is miracle enough, but even more miraculous is that this antique has never broken down, never been repaired, never had need of a service technician. For 57 years it has quietly purred away, serving one generation after another. It shows no sign of stopping. Yes, the original exterior paint is closer to rust brown than original white, but it’s purely cosmetic. The freezer is as functional today as it was the day it rolled off the assembly line nearly six decades ago.

While this remarkable performance might be dismissed as circumstance, could it be more?  As unlikely as this performance is, surely the Lord played a roll, for the “tender mercies of the Lord are real and….. do not occur randomly or merely by coincidence” This tender mercy binds my wife, my children, and grand children to a proud ancestry several generations removed. It stands as a reminder that the Lord is mindful of Elizabeth Gustainis’ posterity. Indeed it is true that the Lord’s tender mercies are the very personal and individualized blessings which we receive from our Father in Heaven. Who would have thought that an old freezer would be one of them.