Have you seen things around you lately? Have you seen the people around you? Or have the blinkers of familiarity limited your vision?
The other day I was sitting in a coffee shop, busy with one of my favorite pastimes. No, not drinking coffee this time around! I was people-watching. After sitting there for a while I was once again amazed at the diversity of the Homo sapiens. This led me to a conclusion about the creativity of the Creator! I mean, when last did you really notice how unique every person is? Not even mentioning DNA or genetics now. So many times we do not even see the signature of God on the people around us. Even though the Word says that He knits them together. Plans them carefully. We tend to get caught up in the biological things like genetics etc, instead of getting caught up in the One who designed it all. It is sad how our eyes are blind to all the miracles around us. 6 Billion people breathing oxygen and as many hearts beating at around 70 beats per minute on this planet we call earth. Flowers opening up every morning, the sunrise and sunset. The stories the wrinkles on an old person’s face tell.
I think many times we can be so blind and focus on circumstances, not seeing God working around us.
A good example of this in the Bible is in 2 Kings 6 when Elisha and his servant see things from two very different perspectives. The Syrians were out to get Elisha and surrounded the town of Dothan where he and his servant stayed. Early the morning Elisha’s servant went out of the house and saw the chariots and horses surrounding them. Not something you’d want to see outside your house! Anyway, he goes back to Elisha and says to him that they are most definitely doomed and will have to think of some brilliant plan to escape this one. Now listen to this: Elisha simply says that there is no reason to be afraid. He and his servant have more on their side than they have on theirs. His servant must have thought his master had gone blind during the night! But Elisha’s eyes were actually wide open! More so than the servant’s! He prayed that God would open the servant’s eyes. The Lord answered his prayer and when the servant looked again he saw a heavenly army surrounding them. What a sight that must have been!
You see it’s all about perspective. How you look at life. Do you see the faithfulness of God beyond circumstances? Do you see the grace of our Maker in just waking up every morning? Do we really see?
Open up your eyes! See the Artist’s painting everyday in the skies. This is something I have been noticing lately. The other day we were driving up to Pretoria and I was privileged enough to see one of the most beautiful sunsets in my life so far. Something that intrigues me about sunsets is that they seem to get more breathtaking the longer you watch.
I want to encourage you to see the small miracles in every moment of every day. I know this also challenges me. Someone once said that if you get to the end of a day and you haven’t seen a miracle, you didn’t look for one. That is so true. I bet that if we really looked you wouldn’t find enough hours in the day to praise the Lord! See God working in people’s lives and His signature written all around us. Remove the blinkers and take a good look around. Our God lives even though circumstances tell us differently!
