Ministry Remnants: Miracles in Everyday Life

The fruit of the Spirit is enough everyday miracle to change the world.

Learning to serve the church as the preacher is a peculiar calling. Very earthy to be sure, for the preacher's humanity is on full display. And he dare not be self-conscious for then he merely adds to the cacophony of reasons to wonder about his calling and it's peculiar mode of being. But I digress.

This morning I tried to preach from the wonderful, brief story in II Kings 6. The school of prophets -- young men under Elisha's tutelage -- call for the building of a new ministry training center. Elisha approves and they begin felling trees and erecting a log structure. In the course of the work an axe head falls into the water. The worker is alarmed, especially because the axe head was borrowed. Elisha plunges a stick into the water, the axe head "swims" and is recovered.

Wow! I talked about the real down to earth nature of walking with God, and especially the neediness we always have. This is pretty plain and simple in the story. Then I troubled over how to handle the miracle. Even if I were able to challenge everyone to "Expect a miracle!!" or "Bring your lost axe heads to God and believe the iron will swim!" I wonder.... Would that be the right approach?

Careful exegetes and expositors will ask, as closely as one can with narrative, this simple question: "What is the intent or core meaning of the text?" To my mind the core meaning is as follows:

• We have real-life problems which we can bring to God.
• God sometimes does miraculous acts to aid our efforts.

That's all I have but as I tried to see the clear implications of the story I thought it made sense to deal with miracles more broadly. With that in mind I spoke of the everyday miracles we have in the ordinary of life: love of children, friendship, a sunrise, genuine love. I tried to think about it this way: "Sometimes we see the miracles already there; sometimes God's gives us miracles to help us see." If we open our eyes we will see the touch of eternity in all of life and be encouraged that God is at work all the time in countless ways.

This brings me to the reason for this "remnants." My main concern is that we not think God only does miracles in dramatic, clearly supernatural ways, like making iron swim. The signs and wonders He wants to make real in our lives are daily expressions of the Gospel at work. In a word, the fruit of the Spirit is enough everyday miracle to change the world. And it should be everyday -- the seed of the Gospel continually growing.

That's the remnant. Don't feel lesser-than if you have no dramatic miracle, and don't strive for one. Asking is ok of course and hoping is the human wont. But best to lean in to being transformed by the grace of Christ. This is active daily grace, the miracle in our everyday life.