Miracles in the Mundane

“As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging to Boaz…” (Ruth 2:3).

“What are miracles, Mom?” my three year old asks, wide-eyed and wondering. And I’m wondering, too, how to explain such a concept. What does or doesn’t qualify as a miracle? I choose my words carefully: “Miracles are when God does something extraordinary, like when He heals or helps in amazing ways. But also when He makes all the little things line up exactly how they need to be…” I trail off, hoping I’ve provided a sufficient answer…

Because now, I’m thinking of this lonely college girl shouldering broken cisterns, keeping God and friends at a distance. And through a series of seemingly small events and conversations, and this little Bible study of 18 year old girls, my life was utterly transformed. Through an unforeseen opening and an invitation to live in a house of college women, my life was forever altered. I came into college empty-handed and hurting, and I left whole and overflowing with abundance.

It’s a miracle—this work of God over time, aligning all the little things and intervening in human affairs to bring about extraordinary things. I’ve heard many stories like it; these stories of the glory of God handed down like torches that light the way and keep us believing. He is working miracles in the mundane and turning darkness to light. His hands keep turning lives upside down and opening hearts and hands—all sorts of impossible, crazy things done in the subtle, slow ways that God sometimes chooses to work. Miracles.

I’m studying Ruth right now, this faithful, glass half full kind of girl, and she’s got this miracle story, too. She and her mother-in-law, Naomi, enter the scene empty and grieving with circumstances looking bleak: Naomi’s husband and her two sons have passed away. Ruth and Naomi are widows with no one to care for them, and their responses couldn’t be more different.

Naomi is bitter--and who would blame her? She says, “…the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty…the Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me” (Ruth 1: 20-21). She grieves, as she should, but she refuses to believe that God can bring good again. She defines her life by this difficult season, declaring that her name is “Mara,” meaning bitter, instead of “Naomi,” which means pleasant. Her identity is wrapped up in her broken heartedness, and she’s blind to this gift that God has provided her in the midst of her misery: Ruth.

Ruth keeps on hoping and believing, tethering herself to Naomi and to this God she has heard about. She says to Naomi, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried” (Ruth1: 16-17). She has lost everything as well—her husband and the protection and provision of his family. Her future is at stake: will she ever marry again or be able to bear children? But Ruth remains this faithful friend to Naomi, and to God, and our God can work miracles through that kind of steady, self-sacrificing faithfulness.

Naomi and Ruth make the long journey back to Naomi’s homeland, wondering how they will be received and what they will find when they get there. But God was only just beginning to write their story.

There’s this line in Ruth 2 that I just can’t get over: “As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging to Boaz…” (emphasis mine, Ruth 2:3). Ruth ends up in just about the only place where she would be safe, where she could “happen” to meet Boaz, who was the guardian redeemer of Naomi’s family, the one who could deliver them out of their unfortunate state. What appeared to be an accident was an act of God—our God orchestrates the ordinary to accomplish His purposes.

And doesn’t He do it all the time? God opens doors, aligns circumstances, and brings about divine appointments, coordinating all the “coincidences” to create this grand story. We can’t even comprehend it, all the miracles that God is doing in the mundane, all the ways He is moving behind the scenes. “As it turns out,” all these occurrences are utterly divine, ordered by a Sovereign God who sees.

In Ruth’s story, the miracles come slowly and steadily—a welcoming landowner who just so happens to be the only one who has the heart and ability to help Ruth and Naomi, a legal agreement, a marriage between Ruth and Boaz, a baby boy…whose family line would lead right through King David to Jesus Himself. Naomi and Ruth get a front seat to seeing God move, not in sudden earth-shattering miracles but in this slow mundane unfolding story that is still miraculous. God moves hearts and hands and makes all the details line up just right.

And at the end of the story, Naomi’s friends proclaim it: “Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth” (Ruth 4:14-15). Naomi’s life, which once looked so bleak and barren, has been completely restored.

Ruth and Naomi go out empty-handed and come back full: full arms, full bellies, cups overflowing and full of faith. Ruth is faithful, and she becomes fruitful. Naomi begins bitter, and she ends up blessed by the gracious hand of God and the undeserved friendship of Ruth. God comes through a thousand fold—changing the script, morphing grief into gratitude and filling up all the empty places. Our faithful God takes notice of a “friend” named Ruth, and He shows Himself to be her Friend, blessing her so much so that the blessings bubble over to Naomi and to the generations to come. And God gets all the glory for the goodness and beauty of this story.

May God give us eyes to see all the miracles He has done in our lives, so that He can get the glory He deserves. And may we walk in faithfulness as Ruth did, believing Him for many more miracles to come…