Date: 2.1.24
I remember learning the guitar and having a conversation with my cousin. My cousin, Drew, is eight years older than I and one of the best guitarists I’ve heard in person. We spoke at a holiday meal, and I commiserated learning bar chords, scales, and all the other intricacies of the guitar. He was gracious, sympathizing with things I struggled with that he mastered as a teenager. During this conversation, we began speaking of a mutual guitarist who always tops our “Best Guitarist Ever” lists - Stevie Ray Vaughn. He described Stevie Ray as a guitarist who makes the hard stuff look easy and the easy stuff looks hard. Puzzled, I asked him to elaborate. He explained that great guitarists make the difficult parts of guitar playing look effortless as their fingers glide across the neck of the guitar. That’s obvious…But the “once in a lifetime” guitarists will play something that other players can recognize, study, and imitate with little effort - but there’s something they do that others don’t. There’s a skill and refinement to their playing that is unmatched. What the guitarist plays is simple, but how they play it is masterful. My cousin said, “I see what he’s doing. I can do what he’s doing, but I can’t match the nuance and the artisanship of Stevie Ray. I can mimic it, but I can’t recreate it. Stevie makes the easy stuff, hard.”
I’ve been challenged by the artisanship and expertise of God. We look for the miraculous in our lives. Unfortunately, our definition of “miraculous” has narrowed significantly over the course of human history. For us today, the miraculous means the extraordinary that can’t be explained. Miraculous means the obvious hand of God in operation, moving in a way that defies any and all explanation. We look for God to make the hard stuff look easy! However, there’s so much of the miraculous that we overlook. God is good at what He does. God created the heavens and the earth. Not only that, but He spins it in motion and holds everything in balance. The fullness of creative tension is balanced by Him and only Him. He causes the sun to “rise” and “fall” each day. I use quotations because we know that the sun isn’t “rising” nor “falling” but the earth rotates around the sun, kept in perfect alignment and distance to ensure the temperature to sustain life. God does this. The moon is kept in perfect orbit around the earth, allowing for the tides to flow in and out perfectly, hydrating the earth and nourishing life. This balance is so good and so reliable that we call it science. Think about that. God’s management of our earth is so good we forget He’s even involved. God is good at what He does.
We pray for miraculous healing but forget the intellect and advancements used in modern medicine are evidence of God’s miraculous hand. Think about this: the human body is healed using rocks, stones, organisms, and various liquids found within our earth. Those elements are repurposed by us, using the intellect and creativity given to us by God. God has equipped the earth with everything it needs to thrive. God has also equipped man with everything we need to steward this creation and thrive within it. He’s just that good!
The miraculous happens around us every day. We experience the divine hand of God in everything we do. That hand is so efficient, so skillful that we overlook it completely. He’s.Just.That.Good!
Be encouraged that God’s hand is in everything. Don’t neglect the everyday miracles surrounding us. Don’t narrow your view of God’s involvement. God performs miracles all around you and the best ones are SO GOOD that it’s easy to overlook them. God is JUST THAT GOOD!
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