Lord willing, this May, I will celebrate ten years of sobriety. The beginning was tough. I was in outpatient rehab for 18 months while also participating in support groups and submitting to weekly drug tests. There was work to be done, habits to be undone, and accountability to be established. It was a process—often tedious—but something happened along the way. My heart started to follow my body into those rooms as I continued to comply with the process. A miracle was rendered in me—I was made well.

Was it instantaneous? No. Does that make it any less miraculous? Again, no. I guess you could call it a slow miracle.

In Luke 17, we see another slow miracle (albeit much faster than mine!). Jesus tells the ten lepers to go and present themselves to the priests, at which point they will presumably be cleansed. Note that He does not heal them and then tell them to go. On the contrary, they depart in faith, hoping that by the time they reach the priests, they will be cleansed. They have “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Verse 14 tells us, “As they went, they were cleansed.”

We don’t know how long it took; any guess would be purely speculative. But we do know that it happened along the way.

What is Jesus doing in you along the way? Has He asked you to go out in obedience, giving you everything needed for faith—except the results themselves? Are you in the middle of a slow miracle?