A couple of years ago, I accepted the invitation to speak at a three-day missions conference in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. The conference was dedicated to promoting missions on the foreign fields, as well as planting new churches in America.

On Monday night of the conference, the pastor did not call me up to speak. On Tuesday evening I was ready to go, yet the pastor did not call me up to speak. I thought they must have been planning on me closing the meeting out.

That afternoon before the conference, while brushing my teeth In my hotel room, a tooth broke off and went down the drain.  I might mention that I wear false teeth, which I made for myself after an accident in my teen years. The tooth went down the drain of the sink and I went into panic mode, pulling the drain trap off.  In doing so, I broke the drain trap into pieces and cut up my hand.   In the midst of the mess of the drain pieces and my bleeding hand, I discovered that my tooth had gone through the drain trap and could not be recovered.

The worst of it was, it was one of my front teeth. For me to get up and speak would leave me looking like a full-blown hillbilly.  I first entertained the idea of calling the church and informing them that I could not come to the meeting. When I called the office of the church, the pastor heard my dilemma and said, “Pastor Smith you have to come.” I said, “I can’t.” He replied, “Pastor Smith, tonight in the conference we are honoring you as the ‘Church Planter of the Decade,’ and we are giving you several gifts as well as a large financial gift to take your wife on a vacation.”

I could not believe my ears. How in the world could I get up with my front tooth missing? I turned and noticed that in my fruit basket, which the church had provided for me in my motel room, there sat a package of Chiclets gum. As you may know, this kind of gum resembles large white teeth.

That evening I climbed to the pulpit to receive my award, with a Chiclet stuck in the place of my tooth. My prayer, as I stood before the large crowd, was that my new tooth would not dissolve before I left the platform. I made it, and as soon as possible slipped out the door, with my new tooth melting and falling out of its socket.

The great Biblical truth discovered through this humorous story is, “God will always make a way of escape.”

Written by Pastor Marvin Smith