Monday, December 5, 2016

Asking Myself: When has God intervened in your life?


This is the 32nd post in my series "Asking Myself," in which I weekly ponder one question posed in Teresa Blythe's excellent book, 50 Ways to Pray. You can find the start of the series here and my previous post here. The first nine posts focused on theological musings, while posts 10 to 25 prayerfully consider the specific questions Jesus posed in the New Testament. Posts 26 to present focus on Questions on Spirituality.



Q: Can you think of a time when God intervened in your life?


First off, what do I think about the term "intervene"? Is this some kind of saving grace at a time when I didn't deserve it or couldn't muster it myself? Is it something I didn't even know or think to ask for? Or is it a clear answer to a desperate prayer? Intervention of old (and new testament) seems to entail the supernatural: shipwreck survivals, gospel-preaching teleportation, earthquake prison releases and the like. 

I do not have any clear-cut, undeniably hand-of-God moments in my history. But, as usual, I buck against this obvious interpretation of the idea of intervention. And I wonder, might God be intervening momently... keeping the earth in motion and the sun burning and us tiny humans from blowing each other to smithereens? And doesn't he work specifically in my own life-- intervening in matters of the heart? But to answer what I think the question is actually asking, yes, I do have a handful of incidents that I attribute to God's intervening hand. And I will tell them to you: