Shelter in Place with Joni: A 7-Day Devotional Reading Plan, Part 2Sample

The Littlest Things

One night King Xerxes couldn’t get to sleep. He had at his disposal servants to fan away the heat, musicians to serenade him, a harem full of companions, and endless wine to drink himself into oblivion. Who knows why he tossed and turned on his pillow? But instead of calling for the fanners, musicians, concubines, or wine stewards, he called for someone to read him the chronicles of his reign (a text guaranteed to make anyone nod off).

As the reader droned on, an obscure passage got King Xerxes thinking. What he learned that night in the pages of those chronicles prepared Xerxes for an empire-altering request which Queen Esther would make of him the next day. The obscure passage tipped his mental scales in Esther’s favor—he would grant her request. This ultimately saved the Jewish race from annihilation. A great people was spared. Centuries later, through those same people came a young boy who grew up to die for the sins of the world—all because an emperor could not sleep.

Your life is no exception to God’s delight in arranging coincidences. God uses the most innocuous, bland, everyday circumstances to engineer the most earth-shattering and significant moments in your life. How he does it is one of the great mysteries. But he does it. Totally natural, but mind-bogglingly complicated.

Prayer

Lord, teach me to see your handiwork in my life in the little things, the mundane, the insignificant. You can speak in the whirlwind and the whisper. Tune my ear to your still, small voice. Amen.

Today’s devotional reading is from the Beyond Suffering Bible published by Tyndale House Ministries in partnership with Joni and Friends.