By James Wilson
My friend, Rick, told me of his colleague who recently passed away. The man was a much loved character in the city Rick and I call home – a founder of our local semi-pro baseball team and public address announcer for their games since the team’s beginning. They held his service at the field and prepared to feed about three hundred fifty friends and fans who came to the wake and memorial. In the event some five hundred fifty came out. All were well fed and there was food left over – just as it was in the biblical story Jesus feeding five thousand on a few loaves of bread and some fish. The God who did that once upon a time is the same God who does that today.
Many will scoff; they “know” such things do not happen in the real world. The trouble is, the scoffers are dead wrong and seriously unaware of how things are in the real world. I can personally recount a dozen-plus creative miracles in my own experience, from the eleven hundred who dined on six fish to empty bottles of oil and wine miraculously filled and finding Holy Communion supplies multiplying to accommodate unexpected participants.
Some will say the mourners at the baseball park miscounted their supplies. Excuse me; these people are professionals. It is absurd to imagine they miscalculated by some forty per cent. Rick is a hard-nosed businessman, not one given to fantasy.
Well then why doesn’t the Lord Jesus just feed all the hungry people in the world three times a day? That question is at staggering height above my pay grade. But the answer to a simpler question is right at my level. The Lord does indeed love the people of the world for which He came, died, and rose – enough to work all things together for good in those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. This message of Romans 8:28 speaks of what is not just real but really real – at ground level and anywhere else.
On a more pragmatic level, California has been mired in an historic drought. In the wake of a record breaking – for rain and snow – winter of 2015-16 and a great beginning for this current rainy season, secular meteorologists say the drought is over in NorthWestern California and seriously addressed in the remainder of the state. What brought this about after years of deprivation? A person of faith in the Trinitarian God of Jews and Christians – Jews believe in a Messiah yet unseen in history and Christians differ with them only in that we have seen Him – would say our state is in the midst of a progressive miracle in response to a movement of progressive repentance.
California’s drought was caused – in meteorological terms – by a high pressure ridge of air hovering over the state for strategically devastating periods. Over four years this phenomenon – which appears naturally for days or weeks periodically but never over months – would disappear during normally dry seasons and reappear when the storms approached – deflecting them from our thirsty state. The Word of God says when such things occur the common sense solution is to decide God is trying to get our attention and to give Him ours. Such a re-focus is called repentance – from Greek and Hebrew words meaning to turn about.
The Bible calls explicitly (2 Chronicles 7:13-14) for repentance as the antidote to drought. A critical mass of Californians engaged a season of repentance over historic sins of shedding innocent blood, idolatry, covenant breaking, and sexual sin – these activities are wholesale in the state; they are even enshrined in various state laws. The season culminated in a Day of Repentance for the state; California’s day morphed into a rolling day that encompassed the entire west coast. The drought relief we have seen is fruit of that repentance. The same fruit is seen in the drought relief visiting Australia.
Many will say this is rank superstition. My response is if it looks, quacks and walks like a duck we might consider the possibility it is actually a duck we see before us. Certainly no other human activity had the slightest value in addressing the calamity.
One of my personal favorite stories of God’s intervention – for that is all a miracle can be – happened in an international airport as I waited for my flight. As I passed a couple in the waiting area I could see them talking with their son on skype; the boy was inconsolable at his parents’ leaving him and they were trying all they knew to calm him. Sizing up the situation was not rocket science and as I passed I tossed up a silent prayer that the Lord would fill the little boy with His peace – and the parents too. When I passed them again about forty-five minutes later they were still visiting with their boy through the laptop. This time the parents and their son were all smiles. I waited until they were finished and approached them.
First I acknowledged minding their business and hoped I gave no offense. Then I told them I was a parent of grown children who remembered how hard it was to leave my kids when they were little. I admitted I felt for the distress I witnessed when I first passed them and said I had tossed that prayer on their behalf. They both broke into broad smiles and exulted that now the mystery was solved. The mom told me her son had done a sudden about-face about the time I must have walked by the first time; now she knew what had happened. Both parents thanked me and – especially – the Lord.
I have seen more than my share of cancers healed and limbs growing out; these things are spectacular and a blessing to be part of. But I much prefer the Lord’s blessing with peace to His displays of power. To me the one changes circumstances while the other heals character. I find the latter has longer lasting impact.
Truth is there is nothing we can do about weather – or anything else of existential import. But we are created by a God who loves. He does some of His best work with a few loaves and fishes and a whole lot of hungry people. Whenever we show up in His Name He shows off.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Time, and Kingdom in Pursuit – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at praynorthstate@gmail.com
