Finding Peace in the Delays: How God Teaches Us Through Life’s Smallest Moments

For years, I expected biblical lessons to arrive with thunder.

I suppose Scripture trained my imagination that way.

The sea parts.

The mountain shakes.

Fire falls from heaven.

Walls collapse.

A voice comes booming out of somewhere that would make even the family dog reconsider his theological position.

So I waited for something unmistakable.

Something grand.

Something that could not possibly be confused with coincidence, memory, instinct, or an ordinary Tuesday morning.

I thought that was how God taught.

I was wrong.

This morning, after working all night, I was almost home.

I turned onto Water Tower Road and there it was.

A train.

Not a short train either. Of course not. Freight trains have some sort of supernatural ability to appear longest when you are tired, hungry, and close enough to home to smell the coffee pot.

The crossing lights started flashing.

I stopped.

And for just a second, irritation started climbing into the front seat.

Then I thought about Job.

Now, to be fair, this was not some sudden bolt of divine revelation.

I had heard Job mentioned on the radio after leaving work, so he had already been pulled out of the filing cabinet of my memory.

The file was sitting open.

Still, there I was, staring at a freight train and thinking about a man who had lost nearly everything.

Perspective has a way of clearing its throat.

I looked at the train again.

This was not suffering.

This was not tragedy.

This was not even really a problem.

It was a train.

So I sat quietly and waited.

No pouting.

No muttering.

No argument with the railroad.

Just waiting.

And somewhere in those few minutes, something changed.

Not outside the windshield.

Inside.

Peace settled in.

That surprised me.

I spent a lot of years waiting for God to part the sea, when perhaps I should have been paying attention to the small things happening at the railroad crossing.

I looked for thunder and missed whispers.

I expected earthquakes and overlooked the breeze.

I waited for some enormous spiritual event while little lessons walked past me wearing ordinary clothes.

Maybe that is how much of faith actually works.

A thought you heard earlier comes back at the right moment, or a verse you have read dozens of times suddenly fits the day you are living.

Then there are those moments when you almost say something, then decide not to.

You notice someone you would normally pass by.

You feel irritation arrive and realize you do not have to invite it in for coffee.

Small things.

Quiet things.

Things nobody else would ever know happened.

We remember the spectacular moments in Scripture because they are spectacular. We see Moses stand at the sea, and Eljah sees fire and Joshua watches the walls fall.

Those moments matter.

But Elijah also discovered something else, the Lord was not in the wind, in an earthquake, or in a fire.

Then came the quiet voice.

I think I am beginning to understand that.

Perhaps spiritual maturity is not learning how to hear louder.

Perhaps it is learning how to listen better.

Maybe God does not always need thunder.

Maybe I simply needed to stop requiring it.

By the time the train passed, nothing dramatic had happened.

No miracle.

No grand revelation.

No voice from heaven.

The gates lifted.

I drove home.

I fed Salty Dog.

I fed Bluey.

I fed Mr. Kitty, also known as Bat Cat, formerly known as Disaster Cat, who appears to be collecting aliases faster than most federal witnesses.

Then I sat down and realized I felt completely at peace.

That may have been the lesson.

I spent years waiting for the sea to part, and if I’m honest hoped for it. All the while, God may have been teaching me through freight trains, quiet rooms, unfinished thoughts, and tiny whispers carried on a breeze.

Maybe the whisper was always there, and  I missed it because I was just waiting for thunder.