Most of our most beloved well-known Bible stories are the ones that have at their core a miracle. Jesus’ amazing deeds we are most familiar with, the parting of the Red Sea captures our fascination, and the amazing deeds of the prophets like Elijah and Elisha grab our attention. Miracles are by nature fantastic and that is why we love them so much and why people hope God does miraculous things in their lives. However, there is another working of God that you can see every single day that is just as fantastic as His miracles. I’m talking about His providence.
Providence is how God brings about His purposes and plans through the natural agencies of life: things like human decisions, natural causations, and everyday happenings of life. To think that God is accomplishing exactly what He wants through millions of miniscule events and countless choices of people is almost as staggering to consider as a miracle. Take for example how God arranges Moses to be the deliverer of the Israelites from Egypt.
We know the order of Pharaoh was to kill all the male Hebrew babies by drowning them in the Nile (Exodus 1:22). Well, Moses’ mother cannot keep his birth a secret any longer so she sends Moses down the Nile in an ark closely watched by Miriam his sister. It just so happens that Pharaoh’s own daughter is bathing in the river on that day at exactly that time and sees the little basket. Instead of being repulsed by the Hebrew child or being a fastidious keeper of her father’s order, she has compassion on the baby instead (2:6). What if she was in a bad mood that day? Or if her bath was a minute or two later? Baby Moses is protected by the providence of God.
Moses ends up being raised in Pharaoh’s home and given all the luxuries of being his adopted son. But it just so happens, years later, that Moses is taking a walk and sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew and Moses acts out and kills the Egyptian. This causes him to be a wanted man so he has to flee out of Egypt. What if he was seen by someone else or arrested before he could flee? God’s deliverer would be done for before he had delivered anything. Through Moses’ rash behavior God brings about the course of events that separates Moses from his privileged lifestyle to being closer to his own people.
As Moses flees he ends up in the land of Midian, which is where he will eventually be called by God to be the deliverer. But while he is in this wilderness area he just so happens to encounter a shepherd’s daughters. He delivers them from oppression (2:17) and ends up marrying one and becomes a shepherd of a flock in the wilderness. Surely, God is using this time to prepare him to lead Israel through the wilderness. These seemingly random events are actually providential appointments that get him ready to be used by God. It is at this time that the people of Israel cry out to God for help and God knows His deliverer is now ready to go help His people.
You cannot help but see the overarching working of God in this entire situation and it is over a period of 80 years! Through countless decisions and millions of encounters God accomplishes exactly what He wants to: He gets His deliverer ready. This shows us His sovereign control and rule over everything in this universe, including not just nature, but human decisions, choices, and encounters.
Think about your own life for a moment. How has the providence of God ordained you to be in the place that you are right now? What quiet behind the scenes events has God used to put you right now exactly where He wants you, and what are you going to do about it? Imagine if you saw every interaction with every other person as a divine appointment that could have ramifications for the future decades from now. Maybe we would be more sensitive to doing what God wants.
As I think about my own life, who would have thought that a childhood fascination with a theme park would lead me to getting employed there and meeting my wife there years later. A child’s simple enjoyment ends up being in the plan of God to His joining me to my spouse. The providence of God is simply astounding. There is no need to look for a miracle, for a supernatural event, God is already supernaturally working every single day in every moment of your life!