Your daily life: “Imagine the divine activities behind the scene”

In her Bible study, Esther, Beth Moore suggests that we “imagine the divine activities behind the scene[s].”

Those few words remind me of my challenge to all you memoirists writing stories with a spiritual dimension. You’ll often hear me say, “Connect your dots.”

By “connect your dots,” I mean this: Search for the ways God was involved in arranging the key events of your life, and then identify the ways He strings them together—how He “connects the dots.”

Beth continues, “If we could only see what is  happening around us in the unseen realm, our eyes would nearly pop out of socket. . . . So much that would thrill us lies beyond our sight. . . .”

Beth writes that God sometimes appears in the midst of a crisis “dressed in the best disguise of all: ordinary events. He tucks a miracle in the folds of His robe and sweeps in and out unnoticed.

“Only in retrospect do we realize that a divine visitation graced our cold, crude winter and the resurrection of spring is on its way.

“Sometimes we grab the hem of Christ’s garment for dear life. . . . Other times it brushes past us and we never recognize that the turn-around marking the months to come began with a single touch.”

She calls those events “so forgettably ordinary.”

So forgettable. So ordinary. Sigh.

That’s why memoirists must invest time in retrospection. That’s why memoirists must set aside time and make an effort to dig deeply into the past, to uncover, piece together, connect the dots, and make sense of what happened in the past.

Yes, that’s a lot of work—but, oh! The treasures you’ll discover!

Amy Carmichael wrote of new insights she received one day in reading Deuteronomy 11 when God was sending the Israelites to the land of milk and honey with the promise that “the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on [the land] from the beginning of the year to its end” (vs 12).

Amy wrote, “‘From the beginning of the year until the end of the year’—much is folded up in that. The day of the week, the hour of the day, every minute of the day, not one is outside His care.” (Edges of His Ways)

Think on those words

while you reflect and ponder and piece together your story—

while you connect your dots.

From the beginning to the end, God’s eye is on you.

Every minute.

“Never believe that the so-called random events of life are anything less than God’s appointed order. Be ready to discover His divine designs anywhere and everywhere.” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest)