Slow miracles 

People’s favorite Bible stories usually involve God’s immediate and overwhelming power-rescues. We love how he dazzles and comforts us when he shows his mastery over the universe by stilling a storm with a word, preserving Shadrach in a fiery furnace, or incinerating Elijah’s sacrifice on Mt. Carmel with a fireball straight from heaven.

Sometimes God prefers to act all at once. But sometimes his miracles and interventions in human history are slow, so slow you can’t see them happening. When God takes his time answering your prayers, it’s not because he’s punishing you or because he doesn’t care about your struggles or because he’s gone deaf. There are reasons for his timetable.

To the Israelites Moses counseled patience. Even though they were instructed by the Lord to begin the conquest of Canaan, it was going to take a long time: “The LORD your God will drive out those nations before you, little by little. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you” (Deuteronomy 7:22).

God has never stopped doing miracles. We want his help turning around a wayward child, and his divine therapy is invisible to us but nonetheless real. We pray for financial relief but can’t see the big changes that God has set in motion. We pray for liberation from a personal addiction but don’t see change.

Don’t panic because of what you can’t see. Remember: “Little by little.”