Midsummer gnat season is officially here, and earlier this week, I asked Tiff whether or not we are unknowingly descendants of ancient Egypt who are receiving a fresh outpouring of the third of the ten plagues from Exodus. It’s a somewhat humorous exaggeration, I know, but every time I run my electric flyswatter through a cloud of the little creatures, I think about the plague of gnats, which happens to be one of my favorite parts of the book of Exodus.

As far as the account goes, it is one of the shorter plagues:

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats in all the land of Egypt.'” And they did so. Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and there were gnats on man and beast. All the dust of the earth became gnats in all the land of Egypt. The magicians tried by their secret arts to produce gnats, but they could not. So there were gnats on man and beast. Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the LORD had said.

Exodus 8:16-19

I love this plague specifically because this is where the Egyptian magicians admit defeat. They were, whether through actually demonic power or through illusion and slight-of-hand, able to duplicate the first two plagues (note: duplicate, not reverse). But isn’t it ironic that the magicians were proved incompetent by such a small plague?

Yahweh used tiny insects to display the limits of their power. If their works were only an illusion, then gnats would have been far too small for them to capture and control in order to make a convincing trick. If their works were actual, demon-powered magic, we can almost envision them thumbing desperately through every book of incantations they had, knowing that there was no ritual or spell for summoning something as insignificant as gnats. Either way, the LORD chose to humiliate them by going too small for them before He also works wonders far too grand from them to imitate either.

This is an excellent display of God’s true omnipotence and sovereignty: He controls not only things grand and enormous but also things small and seemingly insignificant. Indeed, whenever Hebrews says that Christ upholds all things by the word of His power, that means that He keeps the earth revolving around the sun, but it also means that He keeps every electron revolving around their protons and neutrons in each and every atom.

God’s omnipotence certainly means that there is nothing too great for Him, but it also means that there is nothing too small for Him either. You see, satanic counterfeits always long for greater and greater power. Kings are rarely satisfied with the size of their kingdom; they always want to expand in order to display their greatness and the extent of their power. The LORD’s power, however, has no extent to it. Indeed, all power ultimately comes from Him! Perhaps this is precisely why God so delights in using the weak to shame the strong, the foolish to diminish the so-called wise, and the small to overthrow the great. Surely, He delighted in using nothing more than gnats to expose the powerlessness of the magicians’ secret arts!

But while God used His sovereignty over even gnats to humiliate the magicians, it ought to be a great comfort to we who have been adopted as His sons and daughters through His only begotten Son, Jesus. It is certainly easy to become overwhelmed by big things and to then feel the driving need to take them to God. Getting engaged, having a child, switching careers, moving to another city are only some of those big moments in life, and during those times we may certainly feel as overwhelmed as the Egyptians must have been when their land became filled with dead frogs.

Yet probably more often, we get anxious over the multitude of little things together hovering over our heads like a cloud of gnats. Have you been there? Or maybe you are there? It’s not really the pile of dishes, the mound of laundry, the text or email you forgot to send, the child that won’t take a nap, the garbage bag that ripped, or any other one thing that has you on the verge of despair: it’s the combination of them all.

At such times, we have great need to remind ourselves that God is just as present and in control over those little, everyday moments as He is with the big, life-changing ones. Nothing is too big or too small for Him to govern by His hand of providence. Our God feeds the birds; “are you not of more value than they” (Matt. 6:26)? He clothes “the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the over, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith” (Matt. 6:30)?

So if you find yourself overwhelmed by the little things of life, be still and know that the same God who will be exalted among the nations will also be exalted in your doing the dishes, the laundry, or whatever other everyday things are before you.