I am a nerd. I love to study. I love the smell of libraries and bookstores. I love learning about almost everything, but I’m passionate about the word of God. It’s my favorite subject with no contest. Before I had small children it was nothing to spend an hour or two at a time studying, especially if a subject was controversial or immediately applicable. If something peaked my interest I was down that rabbit hole until I felt like I had an answer(desire for knowledge will have to be another post).

Then suddenly I had a baby and thirteen months later another baby, both via cesarean section. I also worked, often taking the babies along. I longed for the word. I longed for time with the Father. Finding five minutes for quiet time while nursing and chasing a toddler was near Impossible. One of my cousins gave me a book entitled, Diapers, Pacifiers, and Other Holy Things, by Lorraine M. Pintus. I think it is out of print now, but find it somewhere if you are a new mom or know one. This book helped me to realize that God was not surprised by this season of my life and that if I looked, He was speaking to me all day long through ordinary things of motherhood. For instance, changing a dirty diaper reminded me that God changed me, cleaned me up and took away the nastiness of my sins (sometimes MANY times a day).

There are many instances in the Bible that God did not send burning bushes or miracles to speak to people, but came to them in the ordinary day in an ordinary way. Take Gideon,

“Then the angel of the LORD came and sat under the oak that was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press in order to save it from the Midianites. The angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, “The LORD is with you, O valiant warrior.””

Judges 6:11-12 NASB1995. https://www.bible.com/100/jdg.6.11-12.nasb1995

He was doing an ordinary task, and, it seems, didn’t even notice the angel sitting under the tree. Hagar, was alone in the desert with an infant, ready to die, rejected and sent away, but God saw her. The woman at the well, written about in John 4, was drawing water mid-day, and Jesus came to her to offer living water and begin his work in Samaria.

In Sunday school we learn marvelous stories of great miracles and men and women doing great things, but many accounts in the Bible are important things happening in ordinary ways or at ordinary times. Jesus told parables using ordinary objects and subjects that would have been relatable to the people he was speaking to on a given day. If, like me a couple years ago, you find yourself in a season of near impossibility for study, or if you have all the time in the world, look around. God is reminding you of himself. Creation is pointing to Him. And He might have something for you in that sink full of dishes, a traffic jam, or a flower growing through a crack in the sidewalk, or maybe even in the dirty diaper. Are you seeking Him?