We tend to look for the work of Christ in the Kingdom in the big stuff—miracles, healings, revelations, etc. I know, however, that the Kingdom is all about me in the little stuff—the ordinary things of life. I know God is there. I’m just not looking closely enough to see him.

I pray frequently that the Holy Spirit will open my eyes to the Kingdom everywhere in my life. This morning when I stopped for a red light, I saw the Kingdom. A red light is a marvel of human ingenuity. But that ingenuity comes from God. The engineering that goes into the creation of the light, the electricity that fuels it, the intelligent design that manages the controls are all amazing and beyond my understanding. Yet the light adds safety and ease to my coming and going, as long as I follow the direction, exactly what God intended by sparking the creativity of humans to establish it.

God also establishes for us spiritual red and green lights. They are harder to see and also to understand, but through prayer, we can come to appreciate them just as we do the lights at our intersections. They also usually can be found at intersections in our lives, some we see and some we do not. God establishes them to add safety and control to our spiritual lives. We can follow them without necessarily even understanding how they work. We ignore them at even greater peril than if we ignore the lights for our cars.

I don’t think I will ever stop my car at a red light again without seeing God’s Kingdom at work in the intersection. It also will remind me to pay closer attention to the spiritual red and green lights he presents.