There are countless expressions of God's greatness in the fraction of the universe of within our own awareness. The contemplation of them fills me with awe. From the macrocosm of the realm of astrophysics to the microcosm of microbiology it blows my mind how God orders everything on such wonderous scale. I am amazed how things operate according to the rules and principles of what we regard as the natural order knowing that God created those rules and principles.
Human nature, being what it is, the things God does that impress us most readily are the times God acts in apparent contradiction to the divinely established natural principles. We lable these as miracles. However, as I place these actions in the context of the omnipotence of God, I find them less surprising and even to be expected. What I increasingly find more wonderous are the ways in which God acts within the confines of God's own established laws to bring about the desired result.
To illustrate what I mean, consider a simple two dimensional puzzle maze printed on a sheet of paper. You are given the task of taking your pencil and drawing a route from one point in that maze to another point. Now, you certainly have the ability to violate all the rules and make your mark straight across all the lines, borders, boxes, etc. and go right to your goal point. That is absolutely something you can do though it violates the rules for solving the maze. It is far more noteworthy when you stay within the structure of the rules and still draw your mark from the starting point to the goal.
Omnipotent God is not limited to operating within the divinely established natural order. However, I am fascinated by the many ways in which God does so while still bringing about extraordinary results. Permit me a personal illustration.
The year was 1970. I was fourteen years old and out of school for the summer. My maternal grandparents (Louis J. Rankin and Rhoda H. Rankin) were missionaries in Peru where they had been working for a number of years. I was going to stay with them for the summer. The plans were for me to travel from Atlanta to Miami where I would pick up a flight on a small freight airline called Copisa. From there I would make my way to Lima, Peru and on to Pucalpa, Peru which was the nearest airport to my grandparents' remote jungle mission station. My grandparents were to meet me there at the Pucalpa airport.
With communication being what it was in those days, all these plans had been laid out in paper mail correspondence. Mail time from the United States to my grandparents' Peruvian jungle station could easily be two weeks or more. Once plans were made any last minute changes cause problems.
As planned, I flew from Atlanta to Miami with no challenges. However, when I got to Miami, I learned that Copisa had decided they did not have enough freight to justify the trip, so they had postponed that flight until the following week. I found a telephone booth and called my parents and explained the situation. Then, I waited by the phone booth until they called me back to tell me what they had worked out. I was to fly Braniff airlines from Miami to Lima the next day. In Lima, I was to change to Faucett airlines and fly to Pucalpa. Meanwhile, I got a room there at a hotel there at the airport while my parents tried to send a wire to my grandparents regarding the changes.
Sure enough, I flew out on Braniff airlines the next day. However, we had some
problems during the flight and had to make an unscheduled maintenance stop. The result was that we were late in arriving in Lima, Peru. I had missed my connecting flight on Faucett airlines to Pucalpa. I was travelling by myself, spoke hardly any Spanish and was only fourteen years old. I was in a strange country and did not know what to do. I collected my luggage and just sat and prayed. "God, I don't know what's going on. I don't know what to do, but You do."
About that time, a uniformed security guard came up to me and in broken English asked if he could help me. I told him what had happened about me missing my flight to Pucalpa because my Braniff flight arrived late. I told him I did not know how I was going to get to Pucalpa now. He listened and then helped me finish clearing customs. Then, he took my tickets and said he would be back in a few minutes. When he came back, he explained that Lansa airlines had a flight to Pucalpa that would be leaving in a little while. They would accept my unused Faucett ticket as payment and give me a flight on their plane. I had never heard of anyone doing anything like that. I did not know this was a fairly common practice among airlines in that part of the world in those days.
I then did the only thing I could think of. I tried to send a telegram from Lima to the airport in Pucalpa to get a message to my grandparents that I would be arriving on the Lansa flight. I hoped and expected they would get that message.
The security guard waited with me until I boarded the Lansa flight. Compared to the Braniff jet, the Lansa prop plane was a rickety bucket of bolts. However, we made it safely to Pucalpa.
When I got off the plane, I did not see my grandparents. However, I went on to get my luggage from the baggage claim area. Then, as I turned around and looked outside, I saw my grandmother getting out of a Volkswagen van. I ran up to her and gave her quite a surprise. Here's why.
In the days prior to my trip, Peru had been rocked by a major earthquake and several after shocks. Many lines of commuication had been disrupted. My grandparents never got the message from my parents about the travel changes. They were arriving to meet a Copisa flight on the wrong day. This was the first time they had been to the airport to meet me that day. Furthermore, they thought they were a couple of hours early. They knew nothing about meeting the Faucett flight a couple of hours earlier.
If everything had gone according to plan from my end, I would have ended up lost in a strange country as a fourteen year old kid. Instead, everything happened exactly as it needed to for me to rendevous with my grandparents. Every setback and every delay contributed to the perfect timing of my arrival. When they understood the events of the prior two days, my grandparents were in awe of God's oversight and shepherding hand. As a fourteen year old kid, I just took it all in stride.
