It’s a Miracle!

In our latest adult Sunday School series, we have been studying the Old Testament “Miracle” stories.  And it has been interesting because a lot of these stores remained stuck in my mind as kid’s stories because, let’s face it, for most of us our first  real exposure was coloring pages, sticker books or flannel graphs involving a large whale or the sun or a talking donkey.  And for me, at least, I didn’t think much about these stories again until I began teaching in children’s church.

When we were kids, the stories remained largely stores about miracles.  In fact, for a lot of the stories, when I started looking at them again, I could only remember the miracle itself and had only a fuzzy recall of what led to the miracle and what the people in the story did before and after.  As an adult though, I have learned to appreciate the other parts of the stories.  When you go back and read the stories from the bible, they become a lot more interesting.  I mean, is there a bigger jerk in the bible than Jonah?  And Hezekiah is granted fifteen more years of life. What a gift he is given.  And to celebrate, he shows the Babylonians all the great riches that God has blessed Israel with.  It doesn’t end well.

But my new favorite is the story of Daniel and the Lions Den.  I look at Daniel as a great model for living in this fallen world.  He is a productive member of society who is put into a position of authority but doesn’t let hit corrupt him.  When the law is passed forbidding him to pray, he doesn’t do what so many of us would do in the modern world.  He doesn’t protest in the street, he doesn’t try to change the law, he doesn’t even try to use his influence with the King to get him to change his mind.  He merely does what he knows is right and trusts God.  And from his actions, God gets the glory.  How much better would our spiritual lives be if we learned to live more like Daniel and less like a constituency.

Daniel allowed God to use him when he was a captive and when he was a powerful political leader.  he faced danger knowing and having faith that everything would turn out all right.  me, I lose faith at the first stumbling block.  But I want to be more like Daniel.

What about you?  What Old Testament story do you find inspiring?