Saturday, January 31, 2015

Jan 31- Feb 1 - Psalm 64:9

Then everyone will stand in awe,

proclaiming the mighty acts of God,

realizing all the amazing things he does

Psalm 64:9

When I pray by hospital beds, I usually pray for two things: the ordinary miracles and the extraordinary miracles.

"Miracle" is a somewhat inflated term for what I call "ordinary." Nevertheless, we ask for God's gracious hand to work through the perfectly ordinary ways we're healed. We want the surgeon's hands to be skillful, we want the nurse to be attentive, we hope the chemical formulas that some pharmacist invented to alleviate our pain and control our infection.

Now, we could call that "ordinary," or "human effort," or "not miraculous at all." But that would negate the fact that God gave the surgeon skilled hands. That would negate that God gave the nurse a heart of compassion, the pharmacist an inventive mind, and chemicals that can be aligned in such a way as to enhance biological life.

To discount the "ordinary" is to discount the ongoing miracle of creation.

And believe me, when I am getting operated on, I want God to steady an ordinary surgeons hands. That's a valid and important prayer.

The next thing I pray is for the "extraordinary" miracles. "Extraordinary" is the true definition of miracle. It's the events that transcend normal explanations -- scientific or otherwise.

I hope you've seen miracles. A doctor saying, "The cancer is throughout." And on the next check: "I can't explain it, there is none."

Now, everyone we pray for will eventually die. That's life. And the purpose of this life is obviously not to live forever on this earth ... but to be with him forever the next life. Therefore, God doles out visible miracles in an amount and on a schedule that doesn't always make sense to us. We understandably want every prayer to be answered by a miracle worth publishing. God is more selective -- at least with providing headline-worthy cosmic events.

Nevertheless ... I'm bold to pray for extraordinary miracles, saying often, "those extraordinary acts of care that we might not even realize until we get up to heaven."

I can imagine standing in God's nearer presence and seeing "the movie" of my life, and seeing all the times when God intervened ... that I didn't even know. Did he slow me down in traffic to miss that accident? Did he keep a surgeon from cutting an eighth of an inch deeper and nicking a vein? Did he put Mary Louise in the same place as me so we could meet? Did he fuel my parents love on the right night so I could be conceived?

We don't have to always see the extraordinary to trust that God is extraordinary.

But occasionally gives us glimpses. Why? So today's verse may become even more true in your life and mine: "Then everyone will stand in awe, proclaiming the mighty acts of God, realizing all the amazing things he does."

In Christ's Love,

a guy who is simply awed

by the miracle of life ...

and that's a daily

cause for worship!

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