The God of wonders

We finish with praise. What better way to finish.

The Book of Micah ends with a Prayer of Praise, with asserting all that God is and all that God has done and is going to do.

It is good to be reminded.

God is our shepherd and we are His sheep.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.  Psalm 23:1

He guides us and provides for us and protects us.

He meets our needs, just as He has met the needs of His people time and time and time again throughout history.

He delivers His people from the toughest of situations – from all types of slavery and exploitation.

‘As in the days when you came out of Egypt,
I will show them my wonders.’  Micah 7:15

He is the God of wonders.

And all the other nations, all those why deny God, will be silenced. They will see for themselves what God can do. They will stand in awe and fear of the one true God.

For there is no other God like this God. No other God who forgives like this God.

You do not stay angry for ever
but delight to show mercy.
You will again have compassion on us;
you will tread our sins underfoot
and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.  Micah 7:18-19

This God is faithful. This God is love. This God has shown His love to His people time and time and time and again. This God shows His love to His people today.  This God keeps His promises.

Praise be to the God of wonders!

I belong to Simple Happy Life, a Facebook group for gratitude, kindness and happiness with a real mix of people. Yesterday, the admin encouraged us to approach life as if everything was a miracle, based on this quote from Albert Einstein –

Let me just put it out there that there is some doubt that Einstein ever uttered these words and if he did, what he meant by his words is probably not as we are taking them today, as an exhortation to embrace miracles.

But there is a choice, isn’t there? A choice each day to see what crosses our path as daily miracles or to explain these wonders away in some other way (or to find a way for these two approaches to comfortably co-exist).

Just take a look around you at the natural world. There is so much that has never been explained. The group admin talked about the plants and flowers in her garden – all the different colours and shapes and textures of the leaves – ‘this alone is miraculous!’

I went for one of life’s coincidences that didn’t feel like just a coincidence to me.

I felt that yesterday. I bumped into someone in Asda when normally we bump into each other in Sainsburys. That may sound small but it led me to reflect how this particular lady walked into my life when I was working at Asda Living and she was a customer I got talking to. She was a foster carer and I was going through a really, really tough time with my adopted daughter. She was a great support to me and yesterday, I was able to be a support to her. Some would see this as a random encounter, but in my work , I meet people over and over again who describe how the universe put people and opportunities in their path: all they had to do was make the most of it all. That’s what seeing everything as a miracle means for me in practice at the moment.

So let’s leave the prophet Micah with the God of wonders at the forefront of our minds.

For the rest of the month until we meet again, why don’t you get a notebook and write down life’s small miracles that you notice every day? The wonders of Creation, the wonders of connection, the wonders or creativity and fresh insights and ‘coincidences’.

And let us praise the God of wonders.