Remember the things I have done in the past. For I alone am God! I am God, and there is none like me. Only I can tell you the future before it even happens. Everything I plan will come to pass, for I do whatever I wish. [Isaiah 46:9-10 (NLT)]
I suspect that most of us live rather ordinary and somewhat predictable lives that are occasionally interrupted by major life events (some of which are welcome and other which are not). For us, it is life’s little surprises—its happenstance and serendipity—that keep our lives from becoming humdrum.
We probably have no problem crediting God with the big blessings of life—things like the birth of a healthy child, a benign biopsy, a successful surgery, 10 years of sobriety, 50 plus years of marriage, the grand’s graduation, the better paying job, or God’s gifts of salvation and forgiveness. On the other hand, we tend to think of the little unexpected blessings—the butterfly or bluebird, the chance meeting, the out-of-the-blue phone call from an old friend, the sermon that spoke directly to our need, making the tight connection at the airport, or the humorous email that arrived when we were in the dumps—as mere coincidence or luck. After all, it seems that our Almighty God must be far too busy running the universe to deal with the minutiae of our everyday lives. Absolutely nothing, however, is unimportant to a God who sees every sparrow fall, knows the number of hairs on our heads, and has etched our names on the palms of His hands. Just as the universe is not run by random chance, neither are our lives!
God can multitask better than a one-armed paper-hanger or a mom with triplet toddlers! While God was keeping the stars and planets aligned back in 470 BC, He also orchestrated Persian King Xerxes’ insomnia and his attendant’s choice of what part of the king’s chronicles was read to him. For that matter, He is the one who placed the villains plotting the Xerxes’ death within ear shot of Mordecai. Rather than coincidences, all of the events in the book of Esther were part of God’s finely crafted plan!
Although we speak to God in prayer, we often chalk up His answer to luck or coincidence. God can speak audibly but He also speaks through seemingly random things—the day’s Bible verse, a chance meeting, a song on the radio, a casual comment, a wrong number, words in a book we accidentally open, and even a bout of insomnia. When we credit the little blessings of life to coincidence, we’re happy. When we credit them to their orchestrator, however, we become thankful. While we’re surprised by these seemingly random or capricious events, our God never is! Everything in our lives has passed through His hands!
Yesterday, we gave thanks for our food, family, health, homes, and all the major blessings of our lives. Today, let’s give thanks for the little blessings, the godsends, that make our ordinary lives so extraordinary—the things that encourage us when we want to give up, put smiles on our faces, fill our hearts with joy, answer our questions, or remind us how much we’re loved. Along with all the big things, let’s be sure to give God credit for the little ones—the God-incidences—that He scatters throughout our days. His fingerprints are everywhere we look!
Lord, I trust in you. You are my God. My life is in your hands. [Psalm 31:14-15a (ERV)]
When explaining to some of John the Baptist’s followers why His disciples didn’t fast, along with the illustration of patching an old garment, Jesus compared His new way with winemaking. While many of us have sewn patches on clothing, few of us are experienced winemakers. Nevertheless, we know that today’s vintners ferment their wine in oak, stainless, concrete, or clay barrels rather than wineskins. Our only experience with wineskins may hearken back to college football games and ski trips when some fellows carried a wineskin filled with an alcoholic beverage hidden under their coats.
You have stripped off the old human nature, complete with its patterns of behaviour, and you have put on the new one – which is being renewed in the image of the creator, bringing you into possession of new knowledge. In this new humanity there is no question of ‘Greek and Jew’, or ‘circumcised and uncircumcised’, of ‘barbarian, Scythian’, or ‘slave and free’. The king is everything and in everything! [Colossians 3: 9-11 (NTE)]
This is what the Lord says: “Because you have obeyed me and have not withheld even your son, your only son, I swear by my own name that I will certainly bless you. I will multiply your descendants beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of their enemies. And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed—all because you have obeyed me. [Genesis 22:16-18 (NLT)]
When writing about mimicry yesterday, I thought of Esther and her cousin Mordecai. The book of Esther takes place between 483 and 473 BC but the story began about 120 years earlier when Mordecai’s great-grandfather was in the second group of Jews deported from Jerusalem to Babylon. Rather than treating these deportees as captives or slaves, they were more like immigrants. Although they were given new Babylonian names, the were allowed to keep their God as long as they also worshipped the Babylonian ones. After Babylon fell to Persia in 539 BC, the first Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem the following year. Perhaps because they’d become comfortable in their new homeland or feared the challenge of rebuilding Jerusalem, like many others, Mordecai and Esther’s family did not return.
Devotions of the Heart 