Waiting On A Miracle

Waiting on a Miracle

I don’t often spend time on golf courses. Nevertheless, a certain Monday found me on a local course late in the afternoon, waiting near the green on the seventeenth hole as a witness to a potential hole in one. In other words, waiting for a miracle.

If the miracle should happen, it had to be verified, of course, so I waited to see if someone might actually finish the par-three hole with a single shot. If they did, the payoff was quite nice: a trip to Pebble Beach with lots of extras (including more golf). So a friend and I parked our cart and chatted while we waited for the teams to approach—and then watched balls fly through the air and drop in the general vicinity of the flag.

The golfers made their way toward us slowly, but approaching much faster was a dark, thick cloud. The wind was blowing hard, and I could actually smell the rain in the air. We were waiting for a golfing miracle, but a storm was threatening to shut us down. So my friend faced the cloud and silently prayed while I kept watching for a one-in-a-million hole in one. In a few minutes, the menacing cloud that had been heading straight for us literally broke in half and went around us on either side.

And I kept my eyes fixed on hole seventeen, watching and waiting to witness a miracle.

Sometimes our eyes are so focused on the miracle we have in mind that we don’t see the miracle at hand. God held a storm back, but he didn’t let us witness a once-in-a-lifetime golf shot. He gave us a miracle all right, but it wasn’t anything like the one we were there looking for.

God’s nearness and his intervention can be as plain as the nose on my face, and I may still miss it. But the miracle that comes unannounced is no less mine, and no less divine. It just may take me a while to see it for what it is.

The LORD said to Moses, “How long will this people spurn Me? And how long will they not believe in Me, despite all the signs which I have performed in their midst?”

Numbers 14:11, NASB