This week I celebrated another birthday. With years come reflection and I realized that I have now lived through a few monumental historical events. I am not speaking of my own personal history, although God has certainly worked in and through some incredible challenges in my life. I was thinking more globally. I remember exactly where I was on the day the Twin Towers were attacked by terrorists flying airplanes on 9/11. I survived through a worldwide pandemic of the Covid 19 virus that literally shut down society as we had known it; we hadn't seen anything like it since the Spanish Flu nearly 100 years before.
This past week seemed like we had again witnessed an event in real time that many in this generation had not seen...an assassination attempt on a United States President. Watching the events unfold and later the media coverage replaying the video over and over again, descriptions including one phrase were used repeatedly... "It was divine intervention."
What does that actually mean? Divine intervention is when God becomes actively involved in changing some situation in human affairs. The statement itself acknowledges a few given principles. First, there is a God. Second, he cares about his creation enough to intervene. And third that He inherently has certain characteristics of omnipotence (He's all powerful), omniscience (He's all knowing), and omnipresence (He can be in all places at all times). It also begs the question, "Why would he choose to intervene?" Because doing so fulfills His purposes, is in line with both his character/nature, and can ultimately bring Him glory. The why is the part we as humans struggle with the most. Why is one person saved and another loses their life? Why if He can intervene, do bad things happen to good people? The bible tells us, we cannot always answer those questions here on Earth primarily because we do not possess the above-mentioned qualities of God. Isaiah 55:9 "As the heavens are higher than the Earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." For our faith to endure then, it becomes necessary to believe in the person of God and not in outcomes being the way we would choose. If you believe that He is good and that nothing He does contradicts his nature, you have to accept these questions aren't always able to be answered. And even more importantly, that our relationship with God can be built and refined through suffering.
Divine intervention can occur in three forms. 1. The Extraordinary... something that defies logic or reasonable possibility...i.e.. an obvious miracle. Dare I say for some, undeniable? The fact that the bullet missed, grazing only his ear, simply because in that exact moment he turned his head to look at a chart during an unscripted moment in his speech seems extraordinary. Apparently making that shot from only 150 yards would have been easy for the average shooter; frankly, he shouldn't have missed. Yet, he did. The extraordinary are when God works DESPITE people.
The bible details numerous stories where God intervenes miraculously. For example, the parting of the Red Sea for Moses and the Israelites, Jesus turning water into wine or raising Lazarus from the dead.
2. The Ordinary. These are instances when God is working in the complexities of our everyday lives. They are intimate displays of his mercy. Since these are sometimes less obvious, one would say you have to be looking for them to see them. In my experience, these are where God works THROUGH people.
"Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Lamentation 3:23.
3. The Prophetic...When God intervenes in a single instance so powerfully that the act itself becomes not just the reason for faith, but the basis for it. The truth is for believers in Christ we have all dodged a bullet. God personally intervened on our behalf by sending his Son. Jesus didn't come to Earth to make people good. He came to make dead people alive. God intervened through Jesus to SAVE people.
"Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our sin." (Ephesians 2:4-5).
The fact is without God's intervention, you are guaranteed to face death and eternal separation from God. It started when evil entered the equation back in the Garden of Eden. But that's when God's plan for redemption and restoration also began. The crazy part of his plan is that it also involves us. He doesn't need us to accomplish his will; but rather invites us to be part of it. He has given us free will to participate in His purposes or not. We choose whether we accept his free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. We choose whether we will listen to nudges in our daily life to turn this way or that. We choose whether we will acknowledge that we just received a touch from God or dismiss it as coincidence. More importantly we choose whether it changes who we are from that moment forward. Don't gloss over this last point. Divine interventions are meant to produce faith. Not stagnant belief, but faith in action.
I couldn't help but to be reminded of a particular scripture when I saw the secret service diving on top of the President after he had been shot. Using their bodies to shield him, even to the extent that their lives could be sacrificed, was remarkable to watch. They performed their duty regardless of what they thought about his character. In fact, whether they liked the man was irrelevant. Elsewhere in the crowd, a father did the same thing out of pure love for his daughter, and it did cost him his life. It is probably the most noble act. "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." (John 15:13) Regardless of whether you believe in him, Jesus has already done that for you and for me.
"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:6-8.
So, do I believe we witnessed divine intervention this week? For such a time as this, I do. And if you chose to see it, the hand of God became visible for just a moment through both the extraordinary and the ordinary... even in the middle of our chaos.
