Talk About Miracles! - March 1, 2009

Scripture: Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren, 10 especially concerning the day you stood before the Lord your God in Horeb, when the Lord said to me, ‘Gather the people to Me, and I will let them hear My words, that they may learn to fear Me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.’ (Deuteronomy 4:9-10 NKJV)

Observation: Moses will not be going into the Promised Land with the Israelites, so he and God continue to prepare them for what they will encounter and what they should watch out for. For forty years God had been their Guide, their Protector, their Provider, their Miracle-worker, and yet there were times when they complained and quarreled, bickered and murmured. Now Moses is telling them that as they go into that land flowing with Milk and Honey God would still be with them, and His miracles and blessings would continue every day; so he warns them to not look at those miracles as the result of their own efforts and thus forget God. He tells them to look at all the powerful displays of God’s love for them and to tell their children and their children’s children so they too would develop an appreciation and love for God.

Application: I arrived at the airport and went to the electronic ticket dispenser. There were no lines and things moved fast, until I got my tickets with the words “No Seat Assignment.” I know what that means: The plane is over-booked by the airlines, and I happen to be one of the “lucky” ones to have no seat, unless someone else doesn’t show up in time for departure and I can have their seat. Since I had a short lay-over and a connecting flight, I was not particularly excited about the prospect of having to wait for another flight and another connection and arriving at my destination in the middle of the night. Fortunately, I did get my seat on the plane leaving Minneapolis and on the one leaving from one of the busiest airports in the world, Hartsfield in Atlanta, and after the more than four hours flight to Ontario, California, I arrived a few earlier than expected.
During the time I was flying, so were hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of passengers around the world, hundreds of thousands of airplanes, large and small, suspended in the air by the miracles of gravity and aerodynamics, thousands of pilots whose brains and skills guided those planes safely to their destination, millions of workers on the grounds, billions of computational decisions on auto-pilots, radar equipment, reservation servers, just to make sure that I, one of millions of people traveling, would arrive safely and on time at my destination. While on the air, my plane was just one of thousands flying above, below, and around ours, all safely traversing the skies to their destinations.
Each time I travel I marvel at all these miracles! We may say it is modern technology; and it is. I marvel that God gave us such incredible brains to create this modern technology. I marvel that while anything could happen at any time and planes do crash and people do die I am alive today, after having flown over five thousand miles in one day, after being surrounded by thousands of people in two different airports, after driving on roads congested with traffic in two different states, after so many things that could have gone wrong I am safe and alive to see a new day! And what God, through Moses, asks me to do is to not forget Him through these miracles and instead build idols to modern technology, to order and safety, to the airline industry or to my GPS. Praise God, I’m alive and safe, because He loves me and wants me to experience a new day with friends and family. Praise God, I can witness for Him one more day through my words and my actions. Praise God, that I can pass these words on to someone who may not have come to know Him yet so they too may see Him in all the miracles of daily life.

Prayer: Father, thank You for the miracles of safety in long journeys across the country or across the world or across the street. Thank You for the miracle of life in a flower, in a bird, in a child. Thank You for breath, and water, and air, and sight. Than you for food and shelter and clothing and a job. Thank You for all Your miracles for us, simply because You rejoice in our happiness. Todya I praise You for being You.