Mundane or Miraculous?

Are we blinded to miracles by the consistency of them?

I’m enjoying a Priscilla Shirer study this summer, One in a Million. In it, we’ve been revisiting the Exodus and how God delivered the Israelites from the Egyptian army at the Red Sea, along with other deliverances from death by dehydration and starvation in their desert wanderings. Shirer has encouraged us to see the value of the wilderness as playing an important role in cultivating our on-going dependence on God — not just through miracles but day-to-day life. She’s asked us to reflect and record the many ways God has delivered and sustained us in our wilderness experiences. 

God beckoned me closer, drawing my attention to His providence in my life when I flipped open to Charles Spurgeon’s entry the other day:

It is a delightful and profitable occupation to mark the hand of God in the lives of ancient saints, and to observe His goodness in delivering them, His mercy in pardoning them, and His faithfulness in keeping His covenant with them. But would it not be even more interesting and profitable for us to remark the hand of God in our own lives? Ought we not to look upon our own history as being at least as full of God, as full of His goodness and of His truth, as much a proof of His faithfulness and veracity, as the lives of any of the saints who have gone before? We do our Lord an injustice when we suppose that He wrought all His mighty acts, and showed Himself strong for those in the early time, but doth not perform wonders or lay bare His arm for the saints who are now upon the earth. Let us review our own lives.

These two faithful servants, Shirer and Spurgeon, have exhorted me to look deeply into the Lord’s eyes, through the lens of my own life, to see His on-going deliverance, protection and love for me.

Perhaps like many of you, I have few (if any) miracles in my story that would make for a box-office hit in Hollywood’s eyes. But as I reflected, the Lord drew my thoughts to the pillar of cloud by which He led the Israelites through the desert. Through it, He told them when and where to move, guiding their every step. As an ages-gone-by onlooker, His presence with them in this form is majestic, compelling and, indeed, truly miraculous to me. Yet I wonder if over the course of 40 years it became mundane to them. After 14,600 days, could being led through the desert by a column of clouds or flame have become commonplace?

The billowing pillar was so much more than a divine road map for them. It was a daily measure of His protection and provision for their very lives. In the intense exposure of the desert, this cloud was respite from the heat that exacted a high toll. At night, the pillar’s flames provided light and warmth to preserve them from temperatures plummeting into the 40’s.

As I trace my daily steps through the wilderness of living on this side of heaven, God’s presence in my life is a miracle in and of itself, rendered possible by blood of Christ. While not the stuff that Hollywood would so much as glance at, His cloud-like covering over me is no less miraculous than the parting of the Red Sea. Perhaps I’ve become jaded, overlooking the simple but profound works He does on my behalf every single day — each one meant to draw me nearer to Him.

Make a point today of pausing with me to thank God for His pillar-presence in our lives and the ways He’s protected and sustained us. Acknowledge them as miracles, far from mundane, even if we’ve grown accustomed to them.

He does, indeed, “lay bare His arm for the saints who are now upon the earth.” We need simply to have our eyes willing to see it, and to share the stories so that all may know and be encouraged.

View the full entry of Spurgeon’s devotional here; the whole book is available online.