God of small miracles —of love

The God I know and love is the God of small miracles. A meal here, a flower there, a park in the middle of a busy city. This God cares about the small things of life as much as the big things. Love is defined by this attention to detail.

Of course, the big things are also important ... a warm house, food on the table, a loving community and these too God cares about but life is as much about the seconds as it is about the hours and days and ... every second counts.

One of those small miracles which, I must confess, I really only began to appreciate once I had young children living in my house, is the miracle of silence. The saying goes that silence is golden, in other words, it is precious. One only gets to appreciate how precious when it becomes a truly rare commodity in one’s life. Not only did I begin to long for silence and seek it out when our family grew to encompass three lively children but I discovered the miracle of silence, which is that God is found there.

This was no great secret. The Christian tradition had long since discovered this and written about it but there’s a huge difference between reading about God and discovering God, meeting God. In silence we make room to do just that. In silence we discover two things actually. We discover firstly ourselves, our thoughts, the cry of our hearts and the spirit within. And secondly, we discover the God who cares about us more than we can ever know.

This God who waits for us in the silence is so big that he is small, so full of light that he is known best in our darkness and so loving that he will not break a bent reed or snuff out a smouldering candle. In other words, in every situation God waits for us to open the door of our hearts to him.

God is not known in our laws, neither the "Thou shalts" nor the "Thou shalt nots". Laws are for lawbreakers. They can never define love. God is not known in our rituals, religious or otherwise. Rituals may speak of God but they cannot contain God. And God is not known in our morals for as good as they may be morals address our behaviour not our spirit.

God comes in our silence, in our waiting, in our hope — to receive us as his beloved creature, made in his image and for his company. God longs for us to walk to him and with him and so with each other ... for the greater miracle of silence is that the love we discover there is also love for the other.

Love calls us both to listen and to serve the other. Listening and serving both require us to be silent for a while.

I love the God of small miracles for in that smallness God does the greatest thing of all, he loves.

• Richard Dawson is the minister at Leith Valley Presbyterian Church.