“Miracles Of the Mundane”

     God often does Heavenly things in the most earthly of ways.  

    "Being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.  And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise and take the young child and his mother and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word.  For Herod will seek the young child to destroy Him.  When he arose, he took the young child and His mother by night, and departed into Egypt" (Matthew 2: 12-14).

   Why not simply call into action those "twelve legions of angels" the Lord Jesus would mention later in His earthly lifetime as an army standing on ready to serve and defend their Master? (Matthew 26:53).  Flight into Egypt seems like a burdensome, unnecessary, and uncertain means of protection for God's beloved Son.  Again, however, our Heavenly Father's eternal purposes, as enacted in time, often require the mundane rather than the miraculous.  Or, we might rather suggest that the miraculous often manifests God's glory in the mundane.  To redeem earthly people, our Lord acts in earthly ways, including and especially, determining that His Son should enrobe Himself with our humanity.  "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same" (Hebrews 2:14).

    We do well to expect the same working in our own lives.  We will frequently miss our Lord and His working if we fail to recognize the miraculous that quietly manifests itself in the mundane.  In this regard, I often think of Jacob at Luz, where he dreamt of the angelic ladder.  He awakened from spiritual slumber to realize how blind he had been - "Surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it not!" (Genesis 28:12-16).  He hadn't expected God at Luz (later renamed "Bethel," or "the house of God").  The place likely seemed ordinary to Jacob, like any other place really.  Or, just the sort of venue in which our Heavenly Father presently visits us to reveal His glory in our simple and seemingly unremarkable story.  Indeed, relatively few spiritual spectaculars and extravaganzas, as it were, occur in any believer's earthly lifetime.  Little need for faith would exist if too many obvious miracles danced before our eyes.  Countless miracles of the mundane, however, flow like a subterranean stream of glory beheld only by those who join Moses in "seeing Him who is invisible" (Hebrews 11:27).  

    Long ago, our Lord revealed His present purposes to work in ways known only to those who have eyes to see.  Anticipating the miraculous in the mundane prepares our hearts to behold the glory of God in venues that seem far too ordinary for the King.  They would be if He did not so love us as to condescend to meet us at our particular "Luz" that we discover to be "Bethel, the house of God."

"Great is the mystery of godliness.  God was manifest in the flesh."

(I Timothy 3:16)

"My expectation is from Him" (Psalm 62:5).

"He hath no form nor comeliness, and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him."

(Isaiah 53:2)

Weekly Memory Verse

   "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."

(II Timothy 3:16)