The Miracle in the Rocking Chair
Not long ago, my husband’s office chair broke. It wasn’t catastrophic, just one of those everyday inconveniences life seems to toss our way. He needed something to sit in, and I happened to have a spare chair from my own office setup.
That chair had been my faithful companion through many hours of seeing clients virtually. But if I’m honest, I’d been growing increasingly uncomfortable in it. Something about it no longer felt right for me, though my husband was delighted with it when I passed it along.
So there I was, without a chair. For many people, the obvious next step would have been to hop online, compare prices, and order another office chair. Practical. Efficient. Done.
But I didn’t feel the pull to do that. Instead, I sat in meditation. And almost as soon as I closed my eyes, I saw it: a rocking chair. More specifically, a wooden glider with cushions patterned with delicate trees, like a forest etched into fabric. The image arrived whole and complete, not as a vague impression but as a clear vision.
When I opened my eyes, I felt certain this was not just imagination. It was direction.
Curious, I opened Facebook Marketplace. To my astonishment, only fifteen minutes from my home, someone was selling the exact chair I had seen in meditation. The tree-printed cushions, the wooden arms, the whole picture. The price? Fifty dollars.
My husband went to pick it up, and by the end of the day, the chair I had glimpsed in prayer was sitting in my living room.
The Little Miracles
People often speak of miracles in grand, sweeping terms -healings, deliverances, sudden breakthroughs. And certainly, the Divine can and does move in ways that defy our expectations and human limitations. But if I’m honest, it’s not usually the grand gestures that move me most.
It’s these little ones. The synchronicities. The uncanny alignments. The ways God seems to meet me in the ordinary, weaving threads of grace through the fabric of daily life.
This rocking chair is not just furniture. It’s a reminder that I am seen and known -not in some abstract theological sense but in the quiet reality of needing a chair. And not just any chair- a chair that fits my hard-to-fit-in-most-spaces body. A chair with a design that reflects my love of a connection to nature. This was a chair just for me.
A God of the Everyday
For a long time, I thought spirituality was about the big moments. The conversion, the calling, the mountain-top vision. And those moments do matter. They expand our horizons, shake us out of smallness, and reorient us toward Love.
But I have come to believe that the Divine is also deeply invested in the everyday.
A chair.
A song that plays at the exact moment you need to hear it.
A phone call from a friend who “just felt like checking in.”
These are not trivialities. They are the very language of Love, spoken in the dialect of our ordinary lives. They are how God whispers, I am with you, always. I am interested in your life. I am speaking to you in every moment. I am whispering words of love and peace to you if you will stop and hear them.
Why the Small Things Matter
Some might shrug this off. “It’s just coincidence,” they say. Or, “Why would God care about something as small as a chair?”
But that question assumes something about God that I no longer believe. It assumes God is distant, preoccupied, too busy with the so-called “big problems” to care about our small ones.
I don’t think that’s true.
I think Love delights in detail. I think the Great Goodness cares about what makes us comfortable, what brings us joy, what eases our way in the small corners of our lives.
When I look at the rocking chair, I see the Divine artistry of a God who knows not only my soul but my body -that sitting with ease matters when I work, that being held in comfort helps me serve better.
And isn’t that what Love does? It tends to us in ways both immense and intimate.
Synchronicity as Guidance
Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity to describe meaningful coincidences that can’t be explained away by cause and effect alone. For Jung, these were signs that the inner world and outer world were in conversation. Evidence that psyche and cosmos were mysteriously aligned.
I think synchronicities are one of the ways the Divine guides us, gently affirming that we are on the right path or nudging us toward a needed shift.
The rocking chair was one such nudge for me. It was as though the Great Goodness said: You don’t need to push, to research endlessly, to strive. Just ask, open, and notice. I will provide.
Seen, Held, and Loved
What this small story has left me with is not simply a chair but a renewed sense of being seen.
We long for recognition, don’t we? Not just the superficial kind but the deep knowing of who we are, what we need, and what brings us alive.
To be seen is to be affirmed as real, valid, and worthy.
To be held is to know that even in uncertainty, we are carried.
To be loved is to rest in the truth that our existence matters -not because of what we achieve but simply because we are.
That’s what I felt in the moment of realizing my meditation and Marketplace aligned: seen, held, and loved by God.
The Invitation
When I share this story, my hope is not that you will go out searching for your own glider on Facebook Marketplace (though who knows, maybe you will). My hope is that you will remember to look for God in the little things.
The Divine often speaks in whispers, not shouts. The sacred often shows up not in blinding visions but in a chair, a meal, a walk, a word at just the right time.
So perhaps the question for us is not: Will God do something big in my life?
But rather: Am I awake to the small miracles already happening?
Practicing Attention
If you’d like to explore this yourself, here are a few practices that might help:
Meditative Asking – Instead of rushing to solve a problem, take a few minutes to sit quietly and ask the Divine: What do I need? What do you have for me?
Daily Noticing – Keep a simple journal of small synchronicities or graces you notice. Patterns will emerge.
Gratitude in Detail – Instead of listing “family, health, home,” get specific. “The way the light fell through the kitchen window this morning.” “The neighbor’s dog wagging its tail when I walked by.” Gratitude sharpens our vision.
Symbol Reading – When something unexpected comes into your life—a chair, a bird, a phrase—pause to ask: What might this symbolize? What could it be teaching me?
Closing
The rocking chair now sits quietly in my home, a place of rest for both body and soul. Each time I sit in it, I remember: the Great Goodness is not just in the thunderclaps and partings of the sea but in the fabric, the wood, the gentle rock of a chair found for fifty dollars.
I do not need the extraordinary to know that I am loved.
The ordinary is here, gently reminding me I am known by my Divine Beloved,