Editor's note: Yesterday, we shared a devotion written for Devotionals Daily by Ebie Hepworth author of Midnight Hallelujah. You can read it here and then continue reading below.
*
For as long as I can remember, my son Asa has ached to ride a bike. Doctors told us early on that his diagnosis of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy would likely make such a dream impossible.
As he got older and our family would go on bike rides together, he’d ask, eyes wide with hope, “Can I try riding a bike by myself this time instead of being pulled behind Daddy?” And every time, my answer was the same: “I’m sorry, baby. Not today.” Riding a bike requires a body to do a thousand small things at once—to balance, react when the ground tilts, catch itself before a wobble becomes a fall. What happens automatically for most children demanded intense effort from Asa. I told myself I was protecting him from injury, but I was also trying to spare him the disappointment of a body unable to do what his heart longed for.
Looking back, I wonder if what I was really guarding against was my own heartbreak if he fell. I mistook caution for wisdom and control for stewardship. I thought if I built a fence high enough around what mattered most, I could keep us both safe. But fences can keep out joy just as easily as danger.
- Love was never meant to be a fortress; it was meant to be a release, a giving over.
Isn’t that how fear often hides in us? In the rules we create to avoid disappointment. In prayers we only half-believe because we don’t want to risk being let down again. We become careful where God has invited us to be courageous, calling it wisdom when sometimes it is worry. But the Father who teaches us to give thanks also teaches us to trust Him with what might break.
One afternoon, while I was away from home, my phone buzzed with a video from Zac. I pressed play. There was Asa, pedaling down our street. No training wheels. No tether. Just pure, unfiltered joy. “Am I doing it? Am I doing it?” he yelled. Behind the camera, Zac laughed through tears. “You’re doing it, son. You’re really doing it!”
His little brothers cheered from the driveway: “Asa! Asa! Asa!” The camera wobbled as Zac jogged behind him. Then Asa hit the grass, tipped sideways, and tumbled off. Before I could blink, he jumped up, arms in the air, shouting, “I did it!” Then he ran straight to his dad and wrapped his arms around him. “I did it! I did it! Thank you, Daddy.”
That video has become a parable for me about the kind of thanksgiving that begins with risk. I’d been so focused on keeping Asa from falling that I’d forgotten what might happen if he flew. Sometimes what feels like protection is really a refusal to trust that God can hold what we cannot control.
Thanksgiving, I’m learning, isn’t just giving thanks for what’s safe; it’s worship that risks believing again.
It is opening our hands when everything in us wants to clench them shut. It is thanking God not only for the miracle seen, but for the courage it took to try.
That day, Asa’s laughter sounded like thanks in its truest form—a small boy on two wheels singing the song of every heart that’s ever been surprised by hope. Maybe that’s what happens when we give thanks for ordinary miracles that aren’t so ordinary after all. Heaven leans close to hear the heart returning to softness, whispering its own delight: You’re doing it, child. You’re really doing it.
For months afterward, Asa told anyone who would listen. At the grocery store, in the church lobby, to strangers at the pool: “I rode a bike! All by myself!” He was so proud of his story he couldn’t keep it to himself. Isn’t that what so often flows from noticing the mercies around us? A mouth that cannot stop testifying to what God has done?
And yet, I’ve come to see how fluent we are in stories of faith that resolve and how hesitant we become when the story bends toward long-suffering. Somewhere along the way, we decided testimony should sparkle—wrapped in resolution, polished by answers. We know how to talk about the miracle when the prayer is answered, the healing arrives, the door finally opens. But we grow quiet about the long nights in between, when pain is not fixed but profoundly felt, when faith doesn’t shout but stays. What about the midnight moments when nothing has changed except the decision not to let go? These stories matter too. They are not unfinished versions of faith; they are its truest form.
Testimony was never meant to be a highlight reel. It is a shared remembering. And remembering grows hope, not because it explains suffering, but because it names companionship within it.
When we testify honestly of sorrow, we give language to those still living inside it.
We tell them their roots of faith are not dying in the dark; they are growing deeper. Some saints will not see restoration on this side of Heaven, and their staying is no less faithful.
To testify is to bear witness—to say, I have seen His goodness here too. Scripture tells us that God’s people overcome “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony” (Revelation 12:11). The blood of Jesus is the foundation of our hope; testimony is one of the ways we remember that hope is still alive. Every time we tell of His faithfulness, whether the story is staggering or seemingly small, we place another piece of evidence before the weary heart: God has been faithful here too. And hope is strengthened in the remembering.
King David said,
I do not hide Your righteousness in my heart; I speak of Your faithfulness and Your saving help. — Psalm 40:10 NIV
The once-blind man said,
I was blind, but now I can see. — John 9:25
And Asa said, “I did it!” Different miracles. Different magnitudes. The same holy instinct: turning memory into witness. Because testimony, both big and small, feeds the heart of faith.
I can’t help but wonder how many mercies we’ve quietly survived without ever naming. How many ordinary rescues we’ve tucked away because they didn’t feel dramatic enough to deserve telling. But when we speak those mercies aloud, we are not just remembering; we are practicing sight. Because in the Kingdom of God, there is no such thing as a small miracle.
They’re hidden in the stove that starts, the roof that holds, the gas that somehow stretches far enough. In a friend’s unexpected text that arrives right when you were certain no one saw you sinking. In the small courage to show up one more day, one more meeting, one more morning of prayer. These are the miracles that don’t make headlines but make it possible for hope to live another day. They are the quiet mercies stitching our ordinary lives back together, thread by thread. And when we name them and thank God for what we once overlooked, we begin to notice what grace has been quietly doing all along.
Watch the Video
Excerpted with permission from Midnight Hallelujah by Ebie Hepworth, copyright Elizabeth Anne Hepworth.
* * *
Your Turn
Can you think of an area of your life where you’ve been calling something wisdom when it really is worry? Maybe today God wants us to give thanks and also to teach us to trust Him with what might break. Remember, in the Kingdom of God, there is no such thing as a small miracle. ~ Devotionals Daily