Where Does He Deliver Big Miracles?

I believe in a God who can still deliver big miracles today.

I just don’t believe he can deliver big miracles in my life.

The oven timer ding, ding, dinged.  Cookies ready.

I’d cooked most of the weekend.  Pans and pans of chicken enchiladas for friends post-surgery, or mid-divorce, or moving into a new house.  Then, after church, came pans of cupcakes and cookies for the impromptu baby celebration we’d have at the work bible study I lead.

The bible study, ironically, on miracles.

Pans of dinners delivered, ironically, for miracles fulfilled (and being birthed).

Sweets for a shower, ironically, for a miracle baby a colleague never thought she’d have.

I sat in church today for the first time in weeks.  Summer weekends are often spent at the farm or ranch.  The second praise song began to play.  Psalm 51.  In the midst of the chorus’ recitation of the Psalm, the songwriters inserted this refrain, not found in Psalm 51, but found all over the scripture:

The Lord is gracious
and slow to anger.
Rich in love, He is good to all,
Good to all.

I wondered, do I believe He is good to all anymore?  

I’ve had a great few weeks.  Time with family.  A place to cook.  Sun and laughter and friends.  The deepest of the heaviness of the past few months lifted.  Still there.  But lighter.  I can breathe again.  Without a doubt though, I’ve put space between me and God.  I’ve intentionally acted selfishly.  Almost as if something in me said, well, if I don’t take care of myself, who will?  

The question left unasked because it would too easily lead to the conclusion, Not God.  

I believe He is good, to others.

Answers prayers, for others.

Delivers miracles, in other lives.

I’m studying 1 Samuel 1 for our bible study tomorrow.  Which, hypocritically or not, I continue to lead.  I’m taken with Hannah and want to interview her.  The scene, right before we find Hannah begging the Lord for a child, we read that YEAR AFTER YEAR she’d been taunted, at the Lord’s house no less.  Her rival would taunt Hannah because “the LORD had closed her womb.”  The Lord had closed her womb.  She couldn’t have a child she desperately wanted and endured years of torment because the LORD had closed her womb.

And still she comes to His house, in deep anguish, and weeps bitterly before the Lord.  She tells the priest, “I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief.”

She still came to His house. In her grief. Asking God for a child.  I wondered how she found the words.  How, after all of those years, she was able to ask.

Then, she gave the miracle back to God.

It’s been well over a year of asking, and believing, for big miracles.  Stepping out in faith and asking others to pray for the big miracle right along with me.  Thinking, several times over, big miracles were en route.  But alas, they were not to be.

What if, instead of running away from a God I stopped believing is good to ME, I came to His house?  Weeping bitterly.  Praying out of great anguish and grief.

What if, in baking the cupcakes for the miracle baby, I acknowledged the goodness of God?  If I remembered the time the miracle baby cupcakes were mine (three times over).

Or remembered when I thought I’d be alone forever, but found a great love…

Or remembered when I thought I’d be unemployed, but found a career…

Good to all.

I believe in a God who can still deliver big miracles today.

I’m still struggling to believe he can deliver big miracles today to my front door…