April 2011

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Many, O Lord my God, are Your wonderful works which You have done, and Your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to You in order; if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered."
Psalm 40:5


The Ordinary and Extraordinary

 Recently, when I was walking in the woods on a chilly almost-spring day, I watched our cat startle himself by jumping into a pile of dry leaves, then shoot ten feet up a hackberry tree before he even knew what had happened.  The Sunday morning following this, Pastor Greg gave a sermon illustration about, just that week, watching a cat climb a tree in pursuit of a ground squirrel.  A coincidence?  A small thing not worth noticing?  I don't think so.  Because of the timing of this I knew, without a shadow of doubt, that Pastor's message that morning was for me, not because Pastor Greg knew about me seeing a cat climb a tree, but because God did.  I believe there's an interconnectedness to things like this, even seemingly small things, or maybe even especially small things, that speaks of God's loving mindfulness of us.

If we are open to this idea of divine interconnectedness, God will also open our eyes to it when we read His Word. 

In Hebrew class this semester we've been translating from Genesis.  Recently we've been in chapters 7 and 8, the flood story. Translated directly from Hebrew, Genesis 7:17-18 reads:

And the flood was forty days upon the earth, and the waters became great and lifted up the ark, and caused it to be raised from on the earth.  And the waters prevailed and increased exceedingly on the earth and the ark walked on the face of the waters.

In my personal Bible reading and study, I've been in John again, my favorite of the gospels, and the very morning I translated that Genesis passage, I had read in John 6:18-21:

Then the sea arose because a great wind was blowing.  So when they [the disciples] had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat; and they were afraid.  But He said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid."

Yes!  No need to be afraid!  Jesus was their Ark who walked on water! Just as Noah's ark was the life-preserving refuge for Noah, his family, those many living creatures, and indeed, of all life on Earth, Jesus was the Ark who preserved the disciples and got them safely to the other side.  Through the blood He shed on the Cross, He is also our Ark, our refuge from the stormy seas of unbelief and sin that threaten to take our physical and/or spiritual lives.  Praise God!

The timing of my reading those two passages on the same day was not lost on me.  Perhaps, without that timing, I might have missed this important interconnectedness between these Old and New Testament passages, and by missing it, would have missed the blessing of deepening my understanding of God's perfect, loving plan for humankind.

Yes, God is a big God who influences the hearts of kings and presidents and keeps the whole vast universe in working order, but He is also the God of cats climbing trees, and of Old and New Testament passages being read on the same day.  When we begin to see Him in this light, as not only the God of big people and big events, but as also the God of ordinary people and ordinary events, we begin to better understand the extraordinary nature of His daily, loving mindfulness of each of us.

 

 

Daye Phillippo

March 2011