More Fiction!

New hagah post:

• The Janitor's Daughter (fiction)

IST: Ordinary Miracle, Sarah Mclachlan

I like to think that when God does miracles, He doesn't always do the supernatural type. I think He often works through the coincidental, the trivial, the mundane. We just don't always recognize them for the miracles they are.

I think it's a miracle when I look out my window and see for just a second a sky filled to the brim with different shades of cloud over trees ranging from green to red, a blue jay, and a rabbit.

I think it's a miracle when people build relationships on strong foundations and know that they can talk about anything and everything and know that there's no judgement, just love.

I think it's a miracle when I can curl up inside, watch the rain mist over the ground, stay warm and cozy and dry.

I think it's a miracle when we learn in chapel how to dance an Israeli dance and it doesn't matter if we mess up or what because we're just here to celebrate our great God.

I think it's a miracle when I can funnel my thoughts into words and my words into a device that will send them almost instantaneously to someone I care about, whether they are steps or miles or half the world away.

I think it's a miracle when people living in a community they didn't even arrange themselves can grow together and love one another and have good relationships with each other.

I think it's a miracle when I can take joy in something simple and laugh at silly things.

I think it's a miracle when my sister folds a piece of paper into a crane or a flower or a bear or any one of a hundred other things.

I think it's a miracle when we're invited to join in a story so much bigger than ourselves, when we can run and not grow weary, when we can rest, be still, and know that He is God.

What miracles are hiding around us today?

Doubts and Conversation Hearts

New hagah posts:

• God Even Uses Candy Conversation Hearts (prose)
• Nagging Doubts (poetry)

Inner Soundtrack: Sleepless Night, Fernando Ortega

This week at my floor's Bible study, we talked about how sometimes God works "behind the scenes," so to speak. We also talked about some times in our lives when we'd seen concrete answers to prayer.

I didn't think much of it during Bible study, but earlier that day, I'd gone to the registrar's office to fill out a form that would change my program of study from undecided to a Writing major with minors in Greek and Computer Science. I'm still not positive that this will be my exact program, but I needed something down before next week so my ducks would be in a row for academic advising. Since I think I'll most likely be doing something like this, I went and filled out the form so I could think about getting into the right classes next semester.

Filling out that form changed not only my course of study, but also my advisor. This had me a little worried. My current advisor was in the Classics department, which I needed for my minor, but I would also need an advisor in the English department for my major.

When you've only had two professors in the entire department and only liked one of them, getting an advisor in the department can be a little unnerving. I was a little bit afraid that I was going to be assigned to that prof whose personality clashed so badly with mine. More than a little bit, if I'm being completely honest. The only other profs in the department that I'd sort of met where about three who had given guest lectures in my English class. One of them stuck out to me as one I liked -- maybe she could be my advisor, I thought. But I didn't know, and since I wasn't sure at the time if I would keep my old advisor or not, I didn't fill out the advisor request line on the form.

As it turned out when I submitted the form, the registrar's office only specifically assigns advisors for majors. I could keep meeting with my current advisor on my own, but my primary advisor would change to a prof in the English department. So I handed over the form and spent a fair amount of time praying that night while I was trying to sleep that I would get an advisor who would understand me and who would be someone I could work well with.

I got an email the next morning that my program -- and my advisor -- had been updated. I went to the Calvin website and pulled up my program requirements. Lo and behold, I had a new advisor. And out of more than twenty professors in the English department, the registrar's office had assigned me to that one who had given the guest lecture in my class -- the one that I'd liked.

Some would call it a coincidence. But after all that, I would call it anything but.

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"

Matthew 6:25-27