It was dinnertime and I was slicing a large cut of meat for a stir-fry dish. The knife was quite dull, making the job more difficult than it needed to be. Right then my husband passed through the kitchen and I asked if he would sharpen a few of my most-used knives. He did an excellent job. When I resumed cutting the beef, I found that the knife slipped through it like it was butter – and then through my finger. Looking down I realized that I had sliced off the top of my index finger, including part of the nail. It began to bleed profusely, so I grabbed a paper towel and wrapped it tightly.

While fixing dinner, I was listening to a favorite CD of Christmas choral music. At this critical moment, the music was particularly lush with the glorious transcendent quality that characterizes so much of this particular musical genre. I sat down at the kitchen table, closed my eyes, and found my thought completely caught up in the simple idea of the glory of God. The clear realization of His powerful ever-presence was mirrored in the pure and soaring musical line right then. For just a minute or two, my whole being felt filled with God’s allness.

Keeping the finger bandaged over the next few days seemed wise, and I also deferred to another pianist at church to play for our Wednesday evening service that week. But I continued to pray to know that the palpable sense of God’s glory and power I had felt earlier, even for just a brief moment, governed my whole being, precluding any accident that could suggest that God wasn’t in complete and continuous control. Within just a matter of days (what seemed a remarkable short span of time) the end of my finger rounded out perfectly and the nail grew back normally. Both index fingers, extended out side-by-side, looked exactly the same. Today it is impossible to tell which finger had been cut.

I’m so grateful for those crystalline moments when we can so clearly sense God’s all-encompassing love and presence – right where we are!