Recognizing the Hand of God in Your Life

By Bonnie Fehlauer

Sometimes it is difficult to recognize the hand of God in our lives. Maybe you’re like me. My times with the Lord are recorded in very random ways and scattered all over our house. There are index cards with scriptures on them in a 2 ½-inch thick stack on the bathroom shelf. A scrap of paper with 3 scriptures from almost 5 years ago is taped to the mirror and is now all curly from the daily steam bath it gets. Quotes from well-known Christian writers are propped on the window sill over my kitchen sink. One is the inside of a card that Mike’s mom made and sent to us several years ago. Another is a two-phrase classic saying in a tiny frame – a gift from a friend that gave us faith in 2005 when life as we knew it had abruptly come to an end.

Books and Bible studies with underlining and scribbled comments on the pages are stacked on my headboard and bookshelf. A substantial box of my journals with notes from sermon after sermon, along with the outpourings of my heart, lives in our storage room.

As I was thinking about the hand of God in my life over the last 45 years since I met Him, some of which are very fresh and some are faded into distant memory, an illustration of the reality of the hand of God in my life came to mind.

I thought about a monkey, swinging from tree to tree. Funny idea, right? I remembered hearing about a monkey that spends its life in the treetops, so I looked it up on-line. The spider monkey lives in the upper layers of the rainforest canopy of Central and South America, 82-98 feet above the forest floor. It swings through the trees searching for food and living a happy, healthy monkey-life. The trees are its world and everything needed to live is there. It uses its hands, feet and tail to grasp and rest on limbs and branches.

This is one way to describe the experiences I have had with God. They have been the trees, branches, limbs and vines that I have sat in and grasped onto, which have kept me lifted above the depths of the dangerous forest floor. Oh, I’ve fallen out of my perch a few times, too. But, I have seen the hand of God over my life in promises like, ”Though he falls, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord grasps his hand in support and upholds him.” [Psalm 37:24]

We can be like the spider monkey, grasping and holding on to the truths that are in God’s Word. It is these truths, as He gives them to us day-by-day and year-by-year, that carry us through life and keep us above the depths to which this world and its forces try to drag us. And when we lose our grip and fall, we can count on Him to still hold onto us! I have experienced Him holding me and extending a rescuing and uplifting branch of truth and hope my way multiple times and in multiple ways.

I encourage you to seek Him more than ever. Make sure to have your personal devotion time. Join a small group study. Get into a prayer group. Gather with other believers and encourage each other. Take notes during the Sunday messages, then meditate on and pray about them throughout the week. This is how God gives you hand-, foot- and …. tail-holds that will lift you up above the oppression of the world and propel you forward into the good things He has for your life. As the years go by, you will see the powerful hand of God in your life.

I put a new scripture up on our bathroom mirror just this morning. Wonder how long it will take for the edges to curl ….