Happy Monday!
If you’re committed to doing something differently in 2012 you might be thinking about today’s word-of-the-week…
CHANGE
In Isaiah 43:18 God says, “I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up! Do you not perceive it?”
I believe He’s doing a new thing. My problem is the “perceiving” part. Last week I posted a story over at Rich’s Ride called The First Ride. Here’s my take on the lesson from that simple event.
Life mostly doesn’t consist of dramatic changes and momentous decisions. Your present situation is the amalgamation of thousands of small choices that accumulate over months and years. We want to believe we can change course in an instant, but altering your long-term path is more like steering an aircraft carrier. Rather than instantaneous ninety-degree turns, life is more about one-degree corrections.
We don’t like slow, small change. We want to see results right now, and one-degree turns take a long time to show up. On a ten-foot journey a one-degree course change only alters your final position by about two inches. But if you maintain that one-degree alteration for one thousand miles your location changes by more than seventeen miles.
Each of us is one small choice, a single one-degree course correction, from a radically altered life. The changes don’t usually show up immediately. Life is long-term because God is long-term. Certainly there are times when God steps in and causes a one-eighty. But more often He works through everyday situations and circumstances.
I moved a bike I couldn’t move. That’s a miracle that changed my course, but nobody watching on that day would have recognized it. It’s the kind of miracle that’s only apparent downstream after hundreds and thousands of miles when you understand that you’re a long distance from where the original course would have led. It’s a one-degree miracle, and it alters everything that follows.
Perhaps it’s not water to wine, but it’s no less a miracle.
Mostly I think God works in our lives through one-degree miracles. We need to open our eyes and look carefully if we want to perceive them.
Have a great week.