June 12, 2025
Few things are more annoying than someone who is constantly bragging, constantly boasting about the wonderful things they’ve done. They spend hours and hours (or so it seems) bragging about how they have reduced customer complaints or how they have increased sales. What’s worse is when we look into their stories and find it wasn’t them who did all this wonderful work, it was their subordinates and co-workers! They didn’t increase sales, their salespeople increased sales! They didn’t reduce customer complaints, their customer service agents reduced customer complaints!
There’s a certain blindness to people like that. All they can see is themselves, not what others them are doing.
Sadly, many of us have a certain blindness to what God has done. We say we are Christians, and that God is active in our lives, but when asked we have a hard time pointing to God’s presence in our living. How many of us, if someone stopped us on the street and asked where we had seen God in our lives in the last week, could readily answer with something specific? “I saw God in the way my neighborhood came together after one of us suffered a loss. I saw God in the composure of my young daughter when she was cut from the team. I experienced God at the grocery store when I saw a young man make up the difference in a lady’s bill.”
These are the things we, as Christians, should be boasting about. Not about our own accomplishments but about what God has been doing in, around, and through us. But to do that, we need to be able to see and describe what God has been doing in, around, and through us.
For many years, I have had a practice of asking session committees where they have seen God in their committee’s ministry since we last met. It’s almost always a standard agenda item during committee reports. “_____ Committee, where have you seen God in your ministry since we last met?” It usually takes a few months to catch on, but I find that when it does the committees take a new interest in what they are doing. Their meetings are no longer ‘business as usual’. They become more focused on their ministries and finding God at work in them.
This is a practice we could easily adopt as individuals. Perhaps when we are preparing for worship on Sunday morning, we could ask ourselves where we have seen God in our lives since we last worshipped? The point is not to feel more holy, but to help us be aware of how active God is. Not only will we be comforted by the sure and certain knowledge of God’s presence, but we will have something worth boasting about!
Where have you seen God since you last read an e-votion?
God’s peace to one and all,
Pastor Ken.