A surgeon once tried to explain to me the positive effects of a medical procedure. I thought I understood but was struggling to grasp the details so I could correctly relay what he was telling me to others. After my fifth or sixth question, the surgeon smiled and said, “Just say, ‘God moves in mysterious ways.'”
Indeed God does. Sometimes we see that people, like the surgeon, become the agents of God’s work. At other times, God’s mystery is in observable phenomena, like the weather. And sometimes, it’s unexplainable, in which case, all we can do is scratch our heads and wonder. But God moves mysteriously in all those ways—in more ways than we usually acknowledge.
I love teaching my night class: the subject intrigues me, but most of all, the students make it work. They range in age from 19 to 70 and older. They are encouraging, kind, and eager to learn, making the class a joy. The trouble for me is not teaching the course; it’s getting there. I’m not referring to the traffic. I’m talking about motivation: the mental challenge of leaving the comfort of home, traveling at night, and returning at 10 p.m. or later.
On one of those nights, as I was driving to the class, sipping my coffee, I thought I saw God moving mysteriously. It was as if his finger had written a message across the sky before the setting sun. A perfectly formed cross appeared. God seemed to be saying, “Take heart, David. Remember, what you are doing has a higher purpose. Keep moving in that direction.”
What made this all the more intriguing was the fact that part of my teaching material that night involved the story of Constantine the Great and how, as a young general, he faced a formidable opponent in battle. Constantine prayed that God would stretch forth his right hand to help him. Precisely what happened just before the Battle of Milvian Bridge on October 28, 312, remains a mystery. Still, for Constantine, as his biographer, Eusebius, reported, it was undoubtedly an instance of God moving in mysterious ways, for the Emperor saw a bright cross of light emblazoned against the midday sun accompanied with the words, “In hoc signo vinces,” (“In this sign conquer.”) Constantine was victorious and didn’t forget what he had seen, thus converting to Christ, making this a pivotal moment in Christian history.
My little experience of the cross in the sky pales into insignificance when compared to Constantine’s epic moment. I was far from facing a significant battle with historic implications. And I knew what caused the cross I saw in the sky: the vapor trail of two airplanes, a perfectly explainable event.
And yet I contend God was still working in a mysterious way, for I saw in my experience something that encouraged me. And what about those two airplanes forming that cross and appearing to me just when I needed to see it, not the day before or the day after? And who or what opened my eyes to interpret the vapor trails as I did?
Sometimes the mystery is seeing the uncommon in the common, the mysterious in the unmysterious, the unusual in the usual. Opening ourselves to the possibility of small epiphanies awakens the torpid soul to the ever-present mystery of God’s presence in life’s ordinariness.
And what about that phrase, “God moves in mysterious ways”? William Cowper, the English poet, wrote them in 1773. Cowper struggled mightily with depression through his adult years. The darkness was so severe that he unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide. Yet even in the misery that engulfed his life, at least for a moment, Cowper perceived God moving in mysterious ways: “His wonders to perform, He plants His footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm.”
How could I not be joyful as I parked my car upon arriving at my class? After all, God had touched me ever so gently, reminding me that he still moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform—even on a seemingly uneventful night when all I did was show up to tell an old story.