There is something inherently beautiful in the mundane, though we seldom see it. We seldom see it because the mundane is often the very thing we once prayed for. It is the answered prayer that has become so familiar, so woven into the fabric of our daily existence, that we no longer recognise it as a blessing. We have arrived at the destination we once desperately sought, yet we have forgotten the pilgrimage it took to get here.

I used to take the bus. I remember it well: the waiting, the unpredictable schedules, the slow crawl through traffic with strangers pressed close enough to share body heat whether you wanted to or not. All I wanted then was to get there. The destination was everything; the journey was something to be endured. Now, if I am not driving myself or flying, the trip be damned. Somewhere between the bus stop and the driver’s seat, I crossed a threshold I barely noticed. The thing I once longed for became the thing I now demand as a minimum.

I have been reflecting on this, turning the question over in my mind: how did we get here? How did arrival become entitlement? How did answered prayers become baseline expectations? The answer, I suspect, lies in a dangerous drift: we equate the absence of struggle with the absence of grace. When the extraordinary becomes our baseline expectation, we stop seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary.

On reflection, I am grateful for where I stand today, perhaps because there is contrast. I was reminded of this recently during a call with a young, brilliant brother, which conversation prompted me to write this. Gratitude, he argued brilliantly (and I believe it too), is a product of contrast. It is the acute awareness of the disparity between where you were and where you are now. It is seeing the distance travelled and recognising that you did not traverse it alone. Without the memory of the bus stop, the comfort of the driver’s seat means very little.

This is where I think the present generation would do well to pause. There is a prevailing theology, spoken and unspoken, that insists God only moves in the spectacular. We have heard it in sermons, read it in social media captions, absorbed it through worship songs that equate divine activity with the extraordinary. If it is not awe-inspiring, the logic goes, it cannot be God. The Shona speakers even said, “zvikasashamisa haasi Mwari.” I am confident that the sentiment was issued in good faith. The people who say such things are, for the most part, trying to enlarge our expectation of what God can do. The intention is noble. But the unintended consequence is that we have become miracle junkies, addicted to the next high, desensitised to the steady rhythm of providence.

We see the fallout of this mindset everywhere. The job seeker stops sending out applications, waiting for a miracle phone call. The sick refuse their medication in search of a dramatic healing. Students neglect their revision because they expect supernatural intervention in the examination hall. The logic is always the same: why engage with the ordinary when the extraordinary is supposedly on its way? We have so romanticised the abnormal that we have begun to despise the process. We wait for the lightning strike while ignoring the rising of the sun.

But here is the question I keep returning to: could it be that the miracle is the doctor correctly diagnosing the condition? Could it be that the miracle is the existence of effective medication and the means to obtain it? Could it be that for the job seeker, the miracle is the clarity of mind to craft a compelling resume, the resilience to face rejection, and the door that finally opens after persistent knocking?

I am not shutting down the possibility of the abnormal. I have seen enough to know that God is fully capable of bending the natural order when He chooses to. What I am asking for is space; space to consider that the bulk of the miracles are things we experience on a daily basis and have simply stopped calling by their proper name. The sunset that paints everything in a golden hue is a miracle of light and atmosphere that no human laboratory can replicate. The rain that patches the dry ground and replenishes river systems is a miracle of hydrology so precise that a fraction of a degree’s difference in temperature would alter ecosystems entirely. The child who laughs for no reason other than the sheer delight of being alive; that, too, is a miracle, though no one will write a book about it.

Perhaps the real discipline of faith is learning to recognise God in the routine. It is easy to praise when the Red Sea parts. It is another thing entirely to praise when the morning arrives on schedule, the bread rises as expected, and the body draws breath without being asked. These are the quiet mercies, the ones that sustain life between the headlines. They arrive without testimony services or social media posts, and yet they are the very fabric of our survival.

I think of that bus again. I think of the version of myself who stood at the stop, hoping the next one would come on time. That version of me would weep at the life I live now. He would call it a miracle. And he would be right.

The tragedy is that I almost forgot. The gift is that I remembered.

Perhaps the goal of spiritual maturity, or any maturity for that matter, is not to constantly chase the next mountaintop experience, but to develop eyes that can see the Holy in the humdrum. To recognise that the ultimate miracle is not the suspension of reality, but the sustaining of it. So, I am learning to take the bus again, metaphorically, at least. I am learning to slow down and appreciate the journey, to thank God for the mundane. For the mundane is not the absence of God’s work; it is the primary arena of it. After all, the life of faith is not built on a few moments of ecstasy, but on a million small acts of faithfulness, a million daily miracles we almost miss.