The Most Unlikely Things

Now, as old Dr. Bonner, of Glasgow, said, "The Lord didn't show Joshua how to use the sword, but He told him how he should meditate on the Lord day and night, and then he would have good success." D.L. Moody

I work in a big city, population 270,000.  I know right about now you are asking, what does that have to do with anything?

Well, yesterday I left the office and turned onto the street in front of my office and on the opposite side of the street was a man driving a tractor.  I’m not talking about a small tractor either.  It was one of those big farming tractors.  Maybe I am the only person who noticed him.  I think I know where he came from.  There is still a farm right in the middle of the city.  It is several blocks from where I work.  I often see horses grazing in the farmer’s field. But he wasn’t going to the farm.  He was heading away from it.  Maybe he was going to the Quik Trip for diesel. 

So I keep driving and I get on the toll road and halfway home I look over and there is an empty field.  Well, it wasn’t exactly empty.  The field was probably 5 acres and had recently been plowed and it was full of seagulls.  It was like a seagull convention.  From the freeway it looked like there was not a space for another bird. There were thousands of them.  The whole field was white with seagulls and no water in sight. 

This morning I am driving to work singing to the songs on the radio and a baby rabbit darts across the six lane road.  He was a sprinter not a long distance runner.  He could have set a world record he was moving so fast.  If I hadn’t been paying attention I would have missed him.  He went from a subdivision on one side of the street to an apartment complex on the other. 

Everything I see and do reminds me of God.  When God appears in your life it is often not in the normal everyday stuff.  Most often it is the odd things that happen in my day that will bring Him to mind.  Sometimes we need something to trigger our God meter. For me it was a tractor, seagulls and a rabbit.  Each of those things made me think of God. Sometimes it is the simple things that trigger my God meter because it is so out of the ordinary.  When we are running from one thing to another we need something to bring us back to God’s great creation.  For me it is the incongruous things that help me see God in daily life.  So next time you see a tractor in the city, a seagull where there is no sea, and a rabbit where there are no woods, let those very things that seem out of place bring to mind the Creator of the universe.          

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, You try to get my attention every day so that I will meditate on You and Your word.  Thank you for the out of the ordinary things in my daily life that bring You to mind.  Each moment I spend thinking of You is time not wasted.  I praise Your Holy Name.  

Scripture: After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, saying: “Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them—the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory. No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.  Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:1-9