In the Tiny Things

Hi Friends - this past week has been a bit of a blur of school, packing lunches, doing laundry, going to the fair (milkshakes! live calf birth! dog show! chinese acrobats!), doctor visits for James, an ear infection (Kristen), colds (all 3 girls) and sleeplessness (James). We are hanging in there. As Winston Churchill once quipped - when going through hell, keep going. Or as Paul once wrote - we are afflicted, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; struck down, but not destroyed...so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 

In all the driving around between the doctor, grocery, and school, every so often we manage to catch a good sermon on the radio. Just days after my last post, I heard Alistair Begg say the following.  He expressed what I have been thinking and writing about...and said it in a much clearer fashion (not surprisingly). Plus he's got that whole Scottish accent thing going for him. I thought I'd share...

Don’t let’s miss God’s hand in the details. Some of us do not enjoy God in the way that we might because we have got some kind of expectation that is neither realistic, nor biblical, nor any other thing. If God was really God and He really loved me and really blessed me, then this would happen and that would happen and the next thing would happen.

Hey!  Listen! Did you sleep through the night? Did He awaken you today? Is your double circulatory system at work right now, creating oxygenated and deoxygenated blood? Do you have renal function? Do you have neurological function? Can you blink your eyes? Can you say hello? Can you kiss your wife? Can you hug your kids?

What else do you want?

Don’t miss God in the tiny things. In the tiny things! The reason that some of us live impoverished lives is because we have decided what it would be really like if God were to step forward at the time that we have decided and to do what we have decided would be right for us to receive if it is going to be a representation of our status and our standing.

Let us, in light of this truth, bring all our doubts and all our fears and all our disappointments...bring it all under this overarching truth. Which is, to keep reminding ourselves of the fact that God has an ultimate purpose. That Paul says, in Ephesians 1, has been set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Him – things in heaven, and things on the earth. For from Him, and for Him, and to Him are all things.

That changes the way we view things. 

Amen.  Go in peace today, friends. 

--james & kristen