I am fascinated by how things connect, relationships between people and God, people and people, people and things (as well as places). It can be easy to be tempted to think of these connections as a coincidence. Some of them certainly may be very random, but as time passes I can discover they only seemed that way from my point of view. Let me share just one simple example.

 

Fifteen years ago I met a young couple while doing their premarital counseling. I thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent together. Fast forward to two years ago after I had retired and started to write. I had never created or set up a website. It seemed like a huge task, but by coincidence the young woman I had met so much earlier had just finished a degree in graphic arts and helped me by designing and setting up the website. Her husband, a writer and editor, was quick to encourage me with my writing and offered some helpful council. When I met them back then, I wasn’t writing and had no plan for a website; but before I asked He was providing.

 

Coincidence? Some would say so, but I have had so many things like this occur that I am persuaded that it is evidence of God’s provision, His faithfulness to provide us with what we need at a particular point in time as we seek to follow His leading in our lives.

 

I think it can be easy for some of us to read in the Bible and watch how God moved then. There were so many concrete examples that seem spectacular. A burning bush, a sea dividing, walls of a city falling down after marchers marched around them blowing trumpets, a giant felled by a boy with a sling and a stone, men thrown into fiery furnaces and not burned up or even singed…really? These seem beyond our imagination.

 

These stories and others can tempt us to wonder why we aren’t seeing such demonstrations today. Who would have guessed these things would have ever happened? Archeological history points to evidences of the truth of them, however.

 

I wonder if it is easy for us to forget the creative genius of God that extends beyond our capacity to fathom.

 

Who would have guessed that He would send His Son to earth from heaven as a human infant to show us what He was truly like? Who would have guessed He would be sacrificed on a tortuous cross and then rise from the dead three days later?

 

As I consider those times I read about from Genesis to Revelation, I am convinced we need to keep an open mind about how God might choose to work in the world.

 

Just because we don’t see Him with our physical eyes doesn’t mean He isn’t here and working. For those of us who are His, He dwells within us by His Holy Spirit and guides us as we yield to Him. Can that not also include leading us to people and places that He is using to fulfill His ultimate purposes in our lives?

 

What is further evidence I can see that points to Him working in such a way?

 

Satan is prone to copy what He has seen the Lord do. He is not all that creative even though his devices of evil are assuredly many. Does he not also bring people and things into our lives for evil, to pull us off track from following the Lord? Of course he does! He copies.

 

We need to pay attention as we look at the world around us and how things are unfolding. We need to stay close to the Lord and be open to new ways He may be at work. We need to know Him from Genesis to Revelation in ways that confirms His presence at work in the world and in us right now.

 

Who would have guessed that His body might not know Him well enough to recognize Him at work today?

 

Make no mistake…Aslan is on the move!