There is a particular kind of quiet frustration in a broken appliance. It is not a crisis — nobody is hurt, nothing is truly at stake — but it interrupts the rhythm of an ordinary week and asks something of you. My washing machine broke down on 20 July. It was still under warranty, so I called customer service. Two technicians came to inspect it, and I was told the bearing was out of alignment. They needed to take it in for repair. Estimated time: about one week.

I waited. A few days later I received an update: spare parts might take two to three weeks to arrive, though they would try to expedite it. In the gap between “one week” and “we are not sure”, I found myself washing clothes by hand — twice, over the course of the wait. Today, 28 July, I got the call that the washer was ready. It’s back home now, sitting in its corner, in working condition. I haven’t turned it on yet. I might tomorrow, or the day after.

It is a small story. But small interruptions are often where God does some of His clearest teaching, especially for someone with little faith like me. And this one left me with three lessons worth sitting with – particularly if you’re someone learning to find peace while waiting on something outside your control.

Lesson One: There Are Always Other Ways

I could have taken my laundry to the laundromat down the road. That would have been the easier, faster fix. Instead, I chose to wash by hand — and as I squatted over the basin, my mind went back decades, to a mission trip among the Penan people in interior Sarawak, where washing clothes in the river was simply how things were done. When I came home from that trip, something had shifted in me. Even with a working washing machine in the house, I would wash my family’s clothes – my wife’s, my son’s, and mine – by hand.

This week reminded me that resourcefulness is rarely about having no other option. It’s about being willing to use the harder one. Paul wrote to the Philippians from a place of real scarcity, not hypothetical inconvenience, when he said:

“Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content.” (Phil 4:11)

Contentment, in that verse, is not passive resignation. It is a learned posture — the same posture that lets you choose the basin over the machine, labour over convenience, even when convenience is sitting right there. What is the “laundromat” in your life — the easy fix you reach for automatically — that might, if you chose the harder way instead, reconnect you to something more humbling?

Lesson Two: What Can We Actually Do Without?

A week without a washing machine is a mild inconvenience. But it opened a bigger question: what else could I do without for a week? The fridge? The phone? The book on my nightstand? Running water? Electricity? Fellowship with other believers?

Most of that list would be uncomfortable to lose, even briefly. But naming it out loud is clarifying — it shows how much of what we call “necessity” is actually convenience we have quietly upgraded in our own minds. This is close to what Moses told the Israelites about their years in the wilderness:

“And he humbled you and let you … that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone” (Deut 8:3)

The wilderness was not punishment. It was diagnostic. It showed the Israelites — and shows us — what we actually depend on versus what we have simply grown used to. Try making your own list. Then notice where it lands: if “fellowship” is anywhere on it, that is usually the most telling item, because it is the one thing on the list that is not a possession at all.

Lesson Three: Peace While Waiting Does Not Require the Problem to Be Finished

Here is the part of this story I did not expect. The washer is back. It is sitting in the corner of the kitchen, restored, fully capable — and I have not used it once. And yet its presence alone has made me calm.

I think that is worth pausing on, because we often assume peace comes after resolution — after we have tested the fix, seen the results, and proved the problem is solved. But that is not quite what happened here. The peace showed up simply because the washer was given back, present and ready, before it had done a single load.

That’s a small, domestic echo of a much larger promise:

“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 4:7)

Peace while waiting is not the reward for a finished outcome. It is what’s available the moment we trust what has already been restored to us — even before we have seen it fully at work. What are the things in your life, or the assurances from God, that calm you simply because they are present, whether or not you have “tested” them yet?

No wonder we read in Hebrews 11:1 that “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith and peace often come together.

A Small Machine, A Larger Lesson

None of this started as anything more than a broken appliance and a mildly frustrating warranty process. But one week of hand-washing clothes, thinking through what we can live without, and now looking at a quiet washing machine in the corner of my kitchen, I’m left with a simple prayer: that I’d hold convenience loosely, name what I actually depend on honestly, and let peace settle in before every outcome is proven – because it already has been, in Christ.

I invite you to say this prayer.
Father, thank You for the small interruptions that teach me to depend on You. Teach me to serve with my hands, not just my convenience. Show me what I truly need and what I have simply grown used to. And even while I wait for repairs, for answers, for outcomes I cannot yet see, fill me with your peace. I want to receive Your peace now, not later. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.