Every Day, A Miracle

It’s been nearly a year since I packed up my life in California and moved 1500 miles away from home to move to the last place I ever imagined I’d find myself. Earlier this year, I wrote about what that journey has taught me. You can find that post here. But today, I want to talk about something a little different, something that God has really opened my eyes to during this uncomfortable journey. In learning to abide daily with Jesus, I have discovered that sometimes we are so focused on what’s missing in our lives, on the unanswered prayers, on the great miracles we are believing God for, that we can miss the everyday miraculous.

A prayer I’ve been praying lately is, “God, open my eyes to see you in my world today.” It’s so simple, but so profound. Proverbs 29:18 states, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” When we pray for God’s vision, we will begin to see God’s hand in areas of our lives that we’ve struggled to see Him before.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord . “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.” -Isaiah 55:8-9

His thoughts, His ways, so much greater than our own. If we truly invite God into our everyday lives, then we will begin to see more clearly that He is working on our behalf in the unseen. After all, this is where faith is birthed.

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” -Hebrews 11:1

By faith, we reach out to Him, believing for what we cannot comprehend, trusting that He truly is ordering our steps daily if we entrust it all to Him.

“Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord , and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord , and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.” -Jeremiah 29:12-14

While the context of this passage is written towards a people that were in exile, we can still find our own stories in this passage of Scripture. Life’s circumstances might not be ideal, you might be facing disappointment and pain, you might be wondering how much longer your season of waiting is supposed to last, you might have lots of questions with very few answers, but through it all, there is an assurance that we are able to find in the truth of His Word. If we give it all over to Jesus, He will be found in our lives.

When we seek Him with all our heart, we will find Him in the ordinary. We will see Him in nature, through a song, in a conversation with a friend, in the words of a book, through art, in the many gifts that He has given us, gifts that we didn’t realize were there all along until we started praying, “God, open my eyes to see you in my world today.”

There’s a book called The Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren that I read several years ago that really echoes these thoughts. She writes about embracing the sacred in the ordinary, for when we do, we will experience God’s presence and the miraculous in ways that we never recognized before. For example, she writes about doing the dishes, an ordinary task that no one enjoys. Although, I had a roommate in college who really enjoyed doing the dishes because it was therapeutic for her, so maybe that’s you. But for most of us, it’s not something that we roll up our sleeves and get excited for. In her book, Warren explains that as she was doing the dishes, she focused on what dirty dishes in the sink meant. Her family was able to enjoy a meal together and dirty dishes in the sink were the result of God’s provision in their lives. Sure, no one enjoys doing dishes. Well, unless you are one of those rare people who also identify with my college roommate. If so, I love that for you. But, I think it’s safe to say that most of us put off doing the dishes because there are 1,001 other things we’d enjoy doing more. But this is the thing about dirty dishes. They are an everyday miracle, a sign of the ways God has provided that daily manna in our lives over and over again.

Physically, spiritually, emotionally, God has daily manna for each of us. What I’ve mentioned above is a small mindset change that we, if we so decide, can practice daily in our lives. Gratitude is one of the greatest practices on earth. Despite your circumstances, you can discover joy unimaginable, something that I believe is one of the greatest witnesses to the world of the life we’ve discovered in Jesus.

This morning, as I was reading through the book of Philippians, I was truly amazed by Paul’s beautiful spirit. Writing from a prison cell, he speaks of the joy and contentment he has experienced. An experience that obviously is not a result of his present circumstances, but a result of daily abiding with Christ and recognizing how every day is truly a miracle.

Lastly, I’ll end with a poem I wrote on my blog earlier last year, the poem that inspired the title of today’s blogpost. I don’t know what you are walking through right now. Perhaps, you are trusting and believing God for a miracle in your family, your body, your relationships, your job and/or your finances. Whatever you are believing and trusting God for, understand this: Don’t give up in the waiting. God is right here in the middle of it all, His faithful love so evident when you begin to pray to see things the way He does.

To your table, I bring
The same unanswered prayers
Day in and day out,
I begin to doubt
With these prayers,
Will I ever see the miraculous?

Until one day,
I heard You say

You are already living
In the overflow
Of answered prayers

And, that’s when
I realized
I’m not waiting on the miraculous

I’m living
With breath in my lungs
In the overflow
Of the miraculous

Every day, a miracle.