It took me nine years after the terrible incident to recognize that God was present. At the time, the experience felt more like an attack from the enemy than a gift from God. But as I processed the event with others who had been there, a lightbulb went on. When I began to see the good fruit that had come from that nightmare, I recognized God at work in ways I had previously missed.
Have you ever missed God at work?
The disciples were certainly not immune to this. Jesus was ministering in Galilee when a great crowd followed him into a desolate place. Moved to compassion, Jesus recognized that the people needed food. He instructed his disciples to get whatever food was available. They found only five loaves and two fish. Jesus blessed and broke the bread and miraculously fed thousands of people as much as they wanted, with plenty left to spare.
Afterward, Jesus sent the disciples ahead in the boat north to Bethsaida while he went up on the mountain to pray. As evening fell, the boat struggled against a strong headwind. Sometime between 3 am and 6 am, Jesus came toward them, walking on the sea. The disciples were terrified, believing they had seen a ghost, “but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid. And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened” (Mk. 6:48-52).
John Mark’s explanation of the event is telling. The disciples did not recognize what Jesus was doing because their hearts were hardened. Only hours earlier, they had watched Jesus multiply five loaves into five thousand loaves, but somehow they failed to grasp who he was and what his miracle revealed. How did they account for the miracle? Who knows? Maybe they conjectured there was a secret stash of bread and fish? But for some reason, they couldn’t see Jesus clearly, as the new manna-giver, the pillar of fire made flesh.
Recently, I watched a video in which John Lennox shared a remarkable story (one he would describe as miraculous) of God’s intervention in his life. The skeptic listening seemed nonplussed, interrupting the story before the full sequence of miraculous events had been explained. Finally, the skeptic asked, “But couldn’t that all have been a coincidence?”
Perhaps it could have been. But is that really how we want to live? Explaining everything away as coincidence?
As Christians, we presume we are less skeptical than the skeptic. We are not deliberately trying to write God out of the story. Yet, how often do we do exactly that? In busyness, in self-centeredness, in hard-heartedness, we miss God at work.
What would it look like to see with the spiritual eyes God intends us to have? In what might seem like an ordinary section of his letter, the author of Hebrews gives us an answer. “Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers” (Heb. 13:1-2), he admonishes. If I were writing the letter, I might appeal to the greatest commandment (Matt. 22:34-40). But the author gives a striking reason: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Heb. 13:2). The author calls us to live with open hearts, ready to serve others and be alert to God’s divine activity in ordinary moments.
Can I be honest? I sometimes wince when people suggest that the person who helped them fix their tire on the side of the road must have been an angel. It feels saccharine, simplistic, and childish.
But who is really being childish? The person who lives in a world alive with Christ’s presence or the person who has neutered God’s world of its triune mystery and wonder?
C.S. Lewis wrote of a “deeper magic from before the dawn of time.” While that language belongs to his fictional world, it points toward something true: God’s reality is deeper, greater, and more wonderful than our materialistic assumptions allow. Too often, I am hard-hearted and blind to the roaring Lion's presence. Let us ask God to soften our hearts, open our eyes, and help us recognize His work in both the extraordinary and the ordinary. Let us not miss him when He is at work.
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