God of Miracles

Sometimes it's not the big miracles that shake us—it's the small mercies. The quiet nudges. The seemingly ordinary moments that turn out to be anything but.

A few weeks ago, I bought three young Saanen does from a farm a several hours south of here. The plan was simple: I’d pick them up at the end of October. Nothing urgent. Nothing pressing. But last Monday afternoon, I found myself with an unexpected day off on Tuesday. I couldn’t explain why—I just suddenly had the day free.

So I called the woman I was buying the goats from and asked if I could come early. She said that’d be fine, and we settled on a pickup between noon and 1:00 the next day.

My friend and I made the long drive down—seven hours round trip. When we got there, the place was empty. We waited. We left and grabbed lunch. Came back. Still no one. It would have been easy to be frustrated, to feel like the day had been wasted. But we figured, well, they have to come home for evening milking. So we waited.

At nearly 4:00, a big van finally pulled in. Out spilled a gaggle of school-aged kids, laughing and loud. The woman came out of the van with a look on her face that said it all: she’d forgotten.

She was mortified. But I understood. A new foster child had arrived unexpectedly the night before, and she’d spent the day enrolling them in school, navigating paperwork, trying to smooth the trauma of a child being dropped into a stranger’s home with little warning and no time to process. My heart softened. Life happens. People do their best.

We loaded the goats and drove home, rolling in well after dark. I was grateful for my friend’s company—driving long after sunset makes my eyelids heavy, and she kept me awake with stories, snacks, and laughter.

And that would’ve been the end of the story. An inconvenience. A forgotten appointment. A couple of tired women and three new goats safe in the barn.

But then yesterday… everything changed.

The farm I got those goats from caught fire. A devastating, fast-moving blaze that leveled the barn and damaged the house. They lost nearly everything. A phone call in the middle of the night woke them just in time to get their family out.

But all their sheep. All their chickens. Most of their goats.

Gone.

Gone in a single night.

I sat in stunned silence, staring at the news. And then it hit me—my goats were in the section of the barn that didn’t survive. They weren’t milking yet, so they were in the back, in the pens that took the brunt of the fire.

If I hadn’t made that call… if I’d stuck to the original plan… if I hadn’t had that unexpected day off… they’d be gone too.

It stopped me in my tracks. That quiet Tuesday, that small shift in schedule—it saved their lives.

I went out to the barn this morning, still shaken, and knelt down beside those three young does. They blinked at me with those gentle, trusting eyes, and I ran my hands over their soft coats and thanked God through tears I didn’t even try to stop. Then I gave them extra grain and whispered a promise to take good care of them—for me, for their former family, and for whatever reason they were spared.

I don’t have answers. I don’t know why some things happen and others don’t. Why some animals live and others don’t make it. Why some families get the fire, and others get the phone call that saved them from it.

But I do know this: God is near. Not just in the storms, but in the soft winds. In a day off. A phone call. A forgotten appointment. A long drive with a friend who keeps you awake. In the gentle nudge that says, “Go now.”

Please keep the family in your prayers. They’ve lost not just their livelihood, but beloved animals, their home, and their sense of normalcy. They are grieving in ways we can’t imagine.

And maybe—just maybe—pause today to look around and count your small things. A warm barn. A safe home. A day that went differently than planned. A life that was spared.

Sometimes the smallest mercies are the biggest miracles.

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