What if the miracle started before you noticed it
I can’t speak for you but I think we generally tend to think God shows up when we finally notice him. The story of Moses says God was there long before that.
Moses spent forty years in the wilderness doing the same gruelling, mind-numbing work; Watching sheep, walking the same dusty ground day after day and going nowhere in particular whilst looking for grass to keep them alive. It was the same day on repeat, again and again, until one afternoon he saw a bush ‘over there’ burning without being consumed, and Scripture tells us, curiosity at 100%, he turned aside to look (Exodus 3:1-3).
Even if you’re familiar with the story, look at what happens next, because it matters. God didn’t wait to see if Moses would notice before deciding whether to act, the initiative waiting with Moses. Two chapters earlier we’re told God had already heard Israel’s groaning, already remembered his covenant. The deliverance was decided before the bush-fire was ever lit. Moses turning aside didn’t cause the coming exodus. It revealed that God had already turned towards his people, and was now calling the one man he’d chosen to go and say so.
That changes what the story is actually about. Not a man’s unusual perceptiveness, but a God who acts first, then interrupts an ordinary afternoon to bring a man into what he’s already doing.
Notice what Israel had done to earn that rescue. Nothing. They hadn’t repented, hadn’t organised, hadn’t sent word up to heaven asking to be remembered. God remembered because of his covenant, not because they’d finally deserved it. The exodus is grace before it’s anything else. Deliverance handed to people mid groan, not people who’d got their act together first. When you have eyes to see it, God’s lavish grace abounds all through history.
Picture that same warm, sunny afternoon today. Moses feels his pocket buzz. He glances down, thumbs through a few notifications. By the time he looks up he’s already moved past whatever was in front of him, because his eyes never really settled anywhere. That’s roughly what we’ve done to ourselves. The real danger isn’t that we might miss a miracle. It’s that we’ve grown impatient with the ordinary means God has always used to speak: an open Bible, an unhurried prayer, a gathered people. Those don’t compete for our attention the way a screen does, so we quietly stop showing up for them with any expectation.
Here’s a myth worth putting to rest while we’re at it. People say the younger generation cannot concentrate, that phones have shortened their minds until nothing can hold them. No, give a nineteen year old a new season of Stranger Things and they’ll sit through it barely moving. So the problem was never capacity. It’s direction. People sit still for hours with things they’ve already decided are worth having. The question worth asking is why Scripture so rarely makes that list, and whether that’s about the Bible or about us. It’s a good question.
Here’s where the church needs to look honestly at itself, because we’ve built something that carries people towards the very shallowness we complain about. Worship, notices, prayer, sermon, ministry, all pressed into two hours on a Sunday, one item shuffled along before it’s really landed. Then the doors close and a hundred and sixty eight hours pass before anyone gathers again. The trouble isn’t that a service has many parts. The trouble is hurry, and the assumption that every minute must be filled with something. (My church family is different!)
The psalmist’s words are a challenge for us; “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10) It was never gentle advice for a quiet corner of your day. Read what surrounds it… Nations raging. Kingdoms toppling. The earth giving way. Forget ten years wandering home from Troy, this is a world properly coming apart. This is what God says to a world in uproar, and the line right after is the real point: “I will be exalted among the nations”. Stillness here isn’t about noticing your feelings, it’s about ceasing to strive against a God already sovereign over everything that feels like it’s shaking.
None of this works if stillness becomes one more thing to achieve. God moved first at the bush. He didn’t wait for Israel to earn it, and he isn’t waiting for you to earn his attention now. He’s already spoken, already sovereign, already keeping the covenant he made long before you were in any position to ask for it. The invitation isn’t earn this. It’s come, because it was decided before you turned aside to look.
Maybe that’s the real discipline worth recovering. Not another item crammed into two hours on a Sunday, but an unhurried hour with the God who has already spoken.
We don’t need to go hunting for burning bushes. He’s told us where he can be found, in his word, to anyone willing to stay long enough to hear it.