Be Still Stories:  Chapter 1

Written on August 22, 2017. By Shari Norvell

MIRACLE
(8/22/2017)

Sole to sandal, sandal to soil, trembling towards intrigue and inexplicable. Rumbling ground his only path to a shrub with leaves of flame. The blazing bush began with God revealing His name and promising His presence to one tongue-tied and heart led. One afraid of what God would ask him to do. The choice for melting to miracle began with becoming open to no longer doing it on his own. The option of accepting God’s will or entering it. For that asked would require God’s power and presence. Without the miracle of His presence, they all would perish.

The choice for melting to miracle began with becoming open to no longer doing it on his own. The option of accepting God’s will or entering it. 

Plagues and plights would ensue. And deliverance made manifest through one on a wild walk with Presence that provided, preserved, protected and powered.  

On the quaking day that Moses met miracle, the division between natural and supernatural was far more fluid than our present has allowed. For we too, tremble before the question, queried by the Answer. Are you willing? Will you more than meet a miracle? Would you meld right into it so from that moment on, you are miraculous?   

A miracle is so much more than a “surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and therefore considered to be the work of the divine.” More than “an extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all know human or natural powers.”

The Hebrew word for miracle is ‘ness’ and is most simply described as something we could never do without Him. Do ya get it? Miracles come en masse and extravagant the more we recognize how very little we can do without Him and how incredibly much we can do with Him. 

Ness is the sail of a boat. A hovering sail that enables a vessel to move along a path. But the billowing sail is to be filled with something. A yes and a yield. Ness, a tiny word bookended with a nun and samech. Nun means “an heir that continues,” while samech is that which “upholds and supports.” 

We are that, when we yield and yes. Humble heirs in the middle of a world that can no longer continue as it is.We don’t carry a Kingdom where God is involved only occasionally. For if He causes rain to fall, He also causes grass to grow. Continuing, enduring, everlasting. Unending and undoing.

We are that, when we yield and yes. Humble heirs in the middle of a world that can no longer continue as it is. 

Miracles are meant to arouse the people’s wonder and awe as His witness is borne. His presence revealed. And a miraculous people takes moaning mankind from apathetic to astounded.

Recently, I met a miracle face to face, fire to flame. That acquaintance revealed everything I didn’t yet believe about Him until I couldn’t help believing. Our convening turned me inside out for the world to see. I was reconciled to that within in order to be changed from the inside out.

And once He entered what was opened, He is everywhere again. The beauty of the miracle left a wide open space that can never be empty, for it was crafted and caverned for the dwelling of His glory.    

Once fused and fluid, my willing cries out for the wondrous of every single day. For a groaning globe has lost the love of His word, His ways and His wildness. It has chosen wilderness instead, but whittled away the beauty inside. The place He is so easily found.

But I know, with all I am, that we can return to the time before the forgetting. For I have, in spite of every counterfeit and concession the world has offered. Beyond grime and grief, joy couldn’t help burning brighter. I returned to the time of believing love is the most, the greatest, the only, before any refused and refuted it. To the One who believes love is everything though the wickeds say it is nothing. The wickeds are not those who have done the terrible, but those who have refused the beautiful. To be the beauty. The forgetting comes from letting beauty go. From demanding arousal instead inviting awakening. From forgetting the beauty we carry to the point that we stop expressing it. Beauty is what makes the intangible tangible, the impossible possible.

Storied:

Journal a time that you met miracle. If that gathering did not move you to become miraculous – return to that moment and choose again! And imagine with ink, what that can look like now!

Beyond:

Let Him lead you to a place in your life, the world where beauty is missing. Then be willing to be miraculous to be beauty’s return.