My brother has been walking around the house for the past two days, randomly bursting into choruses of the song, "Blinded by the Light". I'm really not sure why, quite frankly. I didn't even know he liked that song. In fact, I didn't even know he knew that song existed, let alone knew the words to it.
Actually, I don't think he does honestly know the words to it. Because he just keeps singing the same line, over and over and over and over again, getting progressively louder at each repetition. "Blinded by the light...Blinded by the light! BLINDED BY THE LIGHT!! BLIIIIINDED BY THE LIIIIIIGHT!!!!!"
(Have I mentioned that the singing gene just doesn't seem to exist in our family? Apparently it wasn't just me it skipped. My dear brother didn't have any luck in that category, either. *sigh*)
And when this chorus met my ears for about the 7,402nd time, I realized that maybe, just maybe, this was something bloggable ( < new word. How much fun is that to say? Bloggable bloggable bloggable!)...that maybe there was a way to tie it in to today's post. It's worth a try, right?
While listening to the radio the other day, I heard a story...hopefully I can remember it:
A hurricane ripped across the coastline, pouring intense amounts of rain down on the inhabitants. Cities were flooding, the water was rising and people were crying out for help. One man climbed on to his rooftop to avoid the rapidly rising water in his house. He looked up to heaven and called out, "God, save me!"
The man had loved God all his life, and truly believed that God would reach down and save him from this disasterous situation. He watched for God's hand to come down from heaven; he listened carefully so he wouldn't miss God's voice when it told him what to do.
As he was listening so intently, a rowboat floated by with a neighbor in.
"Do you need some help?" shouted the neighbor. "Climb in my boat!"
The man on the rooftop shook his head. "No, thanks!" he yelled back. "God's going to save me!"
Rowboat man shrugged and rowed away.
Well, the flood waters continued to rise and rooftop man was growing impatient. He thought maybe God hadn't heard him the first time, so he called out again, even louder, "God! Save me!!"
He stared up at the heavens, watching and waiting for the moment when God would come and save him from the floodwaters.
While he waited, another boat came by; this one even bigger then the last. Half a dozen people sat in this boat, but there was still plenty of room inside. One passenger held out a life vest.
"Hey there!" called out the passenger. "You need some help? Here! Take this!"
But rooftop man shook his head and held out his hand. "No, thanks!" he shouted back. "God's going to save me, you'll see!" The people in the boat shrugged and headed off to another rooftop.
Now, the rain had started up again and the situation wasn't exactly getting any better. Rooftop man realized that God better hurry up and do something here. He was getting pretty nervous. "God!" he called out again. "Please, God, please save me!!"
The waters had almost reached the top of his roof. The man danced around anxiously, on his tiptoes, knowing that his miraculous rescue would come any second and not wanting to miss it.
Unfortunately, he was interrupted by the sound of a helicopter.
The helicopter came closer and the man heard a voice coming through a bull horn say, "You there! Hang on! We're sending you a ladder!"
"No!" the man shouted back as loudly as he could. He shook his head again to prove his point. "No, that's OK! God's going to save me!"
Looking rather surprised, the helicopter folks nodded and shrugged and moved off to go find another person in need of rescue.
Well, a few moments later the flood waters had risen so high that they swept the man off his roof. He tried his best to swim away, but in the end, the current was too deep and he drowned.
When the man got to heaven, he said to God, "God!! I've loved you and served you all my life. I've been a faithful follower of your Word. I trusted you to save me! I cried out to you and you didn't do anything! You ignored my prayer, God! Why didn't you save me??"
God raised his eyebrows and looked at the man. "Are you kidding me?!" he said, surprised. "I tried! I sent you two boats and a helicopter! What more did you want?!"
In this story, the man was so sure that God was going to save him. He had this expectation that God would do something totally, incredibly, earth-shatteringly amazing in order to complete the rescue mission. The man was expecting a huge-scale miracle! He was waiting for the hand of God Himself to reach down and save him; he was waiting for God's voice to command the waters to recede. The man cried out, "God, save me!" and trusted God to do so. The only problem was that he was so focused on the powerfulness and miraculousness of God, that he missed the smaller miracle right in front of him.
He was blinded by the light, so to speak. This man believed so strongly that God could and would make unbelievable, inconceivable miracles happen (the "light") that he was unable to see that sometimes, God delights in using the ordinary to do extraordinary things.
The point is that sometimes, we get blinded by the light, too. We get so caught up in reading Bible stories about manna falling from heaven or angels saving people from fiery furnances or the mouths of lions being closed that we forget about the everyday miracles, too.
The thing is, God provides for our every need. If we need it, he's already got it taken care of. He hears every single one of our prayers. And he answers them -- often in ways that we wouldn't expect.
We need to make sure that our expectations don't interfere with our vision. It's great to believe that God does amazing things -- He certainly does! But don't let yourself get so caught up in the extraordinary that you miss all the incredible things he does on a smaller scale.
The most amazing thing God's done in my life? Bringing my best friend into it. There were no lions, fiery furnances, voices from Heaven or manna falling from the sky. In fact, the very first time I met my best friend, I hardly even talked to her. It wasn't an extraordinary day by any means; it was a picnic. But it was the start of the most amazing and important and incredible and yes, miraculous friendship I've ever experienced.
Is there something in your life right now that you are praying for? Are you waiting for God to answer a prayer? Be careful that your expectations of HOW he is going to answer don't interfere with your realization that he HAS answered it.
Don't be so busy waiting to hear God's voice that you miss the rowboat and the helicopter right in front of you. Sometimes God might give you an incredibly obvious answer to an incredibly complicated situation. It's easy to overlook the everyday answers to prayers -- the best friend who called to say Hi when you were feeling low, the brother who started singing obnoxiously when all you wanted to do was focus on writing a blog post, the dog who barked continously for you to take him for a walk so you could enjoy a gorgeous day...
Be ready and waiting for the ordinary AND the extraordinary. If you EXPECT God to do great things, He will. But beyond that, you've also got to be looking for these BIG things -- sometimes in the smallest of places. Don't be blinded by the light of God's greatness -- let his light illuminate things you might have otherwise missed.
