Sometimes miracles don’t look like miracles at all. They don’t come with fireworks or fanfare, or even a large audience. 

No one talks about it much, but a faithful life is often a quiet one. It’s not always the loudest voice in the room or the most dramatic testimony on stage. Sometimes it’s showing up to work, coming home, and being present. Sometimes it’s making dinner, folding laundry, checking in on a friend, reading your Bible, and walking your dog before the sun goes down. It’s choosing peace. Choosing discipline. Choosing to trust God with the small things, over and over again.

We live in a world that celebrates the flashy.  Big moves, bold declarations, overnight transformations. But so often, real beauty is found in consistency. In quiet obedience. In doing the thing God asked you to do… again. It’s kind of like saving for retirement: it doesn’t look like much at first. Just a small deposit here, another there. But with enough time, it builds a kind of security no one can take away. The faithful life is like that too, it compounds. Maybe what some people call a boring life is actually a beautiful life.

That’s where I find myself these days. I’ve been walking 20 miles a week for three weeks straight to train for my SEIT (Super Exciting International Trip).  But I also do it just to move my body, clear my mind, and breathe a little deeper. Every week, I pray God gives me the energy to do it again. Because walking has become more than a habit, it’s slowly becoming a rhythm.

Ever since I committed to this walking goal, I’ve started to see my city differently. When you slow down and move at the pace of your own two feet, you notice things.  Small shops tucked between buildings, a new coffee place you’d usually speed past, a winding trail that wasn’t even on your radar before. These walks have become little windows into a quieter world, one I didn’t know I needed.

Zeus, my loyal (and slightly dramatic) husky, has become my walking buddy when the weather allows. He’s not exactly built for July. Let’s just say summer turns him into a panting mop with legs. But on the days when the temperatures dip just enough, like today, he’s ready. He made it a mile and a half this morning before his pace slowed and his eyes started pleading for mercy. 

But he didn’t quit. He never does. His tail kept wagging, and he trotted on beside me, doing his best to keep up. That’s the thing about Zeus, he always wants to come along, no matter how hot it is or how far we’re going. He shows up, and he gives what he’s got. It’s a simple kind of loyalty that tugs at my heart every time.

Today’s walk took us somewhere new, a shaded trail tucked behind a grove of trees I hadn’t explored before. The sun was still low enough to stream through the branches in golden streaks, and the birds were singing like it was their job. Zeus was smiling (as much as a dog can smile), and I felt that strange, holy hush that sometimes settles in when you’re not trying too hard, when you’re just there.

In that moment, I thought, Who would’ve guessed I’d enjoy walking this much?

I used to think that doing something “meaningful” had to look big. Loud. Impressive. But more and more, I’m learning that meaning often slips in through the back door of the ordinary. It hides in Tuesday morning walks, in tired dogs who won’t give up, in sunlight through trees and the whisper of birdsong. It lives in faithful routines, in the quiet choice to keep going, in the daily yes to whatever God is inviting me into.

This life I’m living might not look exciting to some, but maybe that’s okay. Maybe faithfulness was never supposed to be flashy. Maybe it was always supposed to be steady. Rooted. Beautiful in its simplicity.

I’m starting to think that God delights in our mile-and-a-half Tuesdays. I can’t speak for Him, of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if He smiles when we lace up our shoes and keep walking anyway. Not because we have to. But because we trust Him enough to show up again.

A faithful life isn’t always headline-worthy. But it is heaven-worthy. 

Walking with God

Walking with God is a theme that runs all through Scripture. And it’s rarely flashy. It doesn’t usually come with thunder or applause. More often than not, it’s quiet, steady, and deeply intentional.

Take Enoch, for example. He was the seventh from Adam, tucked into a genealogy in Genesis 5 where every name ends the same way: “and he died.” But not Enoch. The Bible says, “Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.” (Genesis 5:24)

While others simply lived, Enoch walked with God. It wasn’t just about survival, it was about relationship. To walk with God is to set Him always before us, to care in all things to please Him, and to aim never to offend Him. It’s to follow Him as dear children.  If you’ve ever had little ones trailing behind you through a store or across a parking lot, you know that kind of closeness. That kind of attention. Enoch lived that way, with constant care in how he walked through the world, and given the timeframe he was likely rejected for it.

Hebrews 11:5 tells us, “By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death… For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.”

And how did he please God? By faith. Not by doing something big and loud, but by faithfully walking, day after day, with his heart set on the One who created him.

I saw that kind of quiet faith up close when I was a kid. One summer, I stayed on the farm with my great aunt and uncle to help during wheat harvest. My job wasn’t complicated.  I made sandwiches and rode along to deliver them out to the field hands. But what I remember most isn’t the sandwiches or the combine rides. It’s my great uncle.

Harvest meant long days, sunup to sundown, but no matter how early the work began, he was always up before the sun. You’d find him in the kitchen at a wooden booth, steaming coffee in hand, head bent low over his Bible. He wore the same overalls and farm hat every day, and if you happened to walk in while he was reading, he’d gently close the Bible, place it in the window sill, greet you with a smile, and give you his full attention.

He did this every single day. It didn’t matter if it was summer or winter, harvest or rest. His rhythm didn’t change. He wasn’t flashy. He didn’t have a stage. He worked on trucks, fed calves, and made his way into the fields alongside his sons. He did preach a few times at their small country church, but he wasn’t famous. When he died, his obituary was short and simple. It said he loved the Lord.

And yet, to this day, I cannot think of anyone in my life who walked with God like my great uncle did.  Beautifully, quietly, and faithfully. His was a life well-lived. Not headline-worthy, but heaven-worthy.

It reminds me of Elijah, standing on the mountain waiting for God to speak. There was a mighty windstorm, but God wasn’t in the wind. Then came an earthquake, but God wasn’t in the earthquake. Then a fire, but God wasn’t in the fire. And after all of that came a still small voice, and that’s where God was. (1 Kings 19:11–12)

Isn’t that just like Him? While the world looks for God in the loud and spectacular, He so often meets us in the quiet. In the simple. In the steady. In a man with a Bible and a coffee cup before dawn.

Faith That Grows

That kind of faith, the kind my great uncle had, doesn’t usually begin with fanfare. It begins small. Sometimes, it begins as quietly as a whisper, a thought, a decision to open the Bible before sunrise or walk a mile on a Tuesday.

Jesus once told His disciples that faith, even as small as a mustard seed, could move mountains. And it’s fascinating that He chose a mustard seed. It’s tiny. Barely noticeable. But once it’s planted, it doesn’t stay small. It grows into something much larger than you’d expect, something that offers shade, shelter, and space for others. In some places, mustard is even considered a weed because it spreads so persistently. It fills empty spaces. It pushes through cracks in the soil. It grows even when it’s overlooked.

That’s what walking with God does to our faith. It doesn’t just exist, it expands. Quietly. Steadily. Faith grows in the everyday choices to trust Him, to spend time with Him, to seek Him in the ordinary. And before you know it, that little seed of faith has worked its way into your thoughts, your rhythms, your responses. It changes how you work, how you love, how you endure. It even changes how you walk, perhaps physically (in my case) and spiritually.

But here’s the thing: it can be tempting to believe that attention equals importance. We live in a world obsessed with the visible, the celebrated, the platformed. Even in the Christian world, we can fall into the trap of thinking something only matters if it has a sound system, a projector, and a well-designed logo. And those things are all fine, if they’re done with the right heart. But they’re not what make something important.

Faith doesn’t have to be flashy to be fruitful. And obedience doesn’t have to be loud to be powerful. The world may overlook the early-morning Bible reading, the faithful work behind the scenes, the mile walked in prayer, but God doesn’t. Heaven notices. Heaven sees.

Because a faithful life isn’t always about doing something big. Sometimes it’s just about doing the next right thing, with God beside you, and maybe a tired husky trailing behind.