Hey Steve!
Great Stuff here.
One one of the other things I often notice. When we read scripture, it's easy to just gloss over the times that God hasn't shown up yet. Within a couple pages, we get through centuries of the Isrealites servitude in Egypt. Because we already know the end of the story, or because we quickly get to it, it's hard for us to take seriously how long it took God to show up. Or even the widow and her son, who are slowly starving to death before Elijah (or was that Elisha?) show up… Presumably this had been a years long battle for them, and they are on their very last meal and planning to die, but we jump into that story right at the end. The very fact that we are reading (basically) completed stories that were written after these stories ended, it can create this false expectation in us.

very true, and I think God made sure to put some of those stories of the "space" because He knows we'll think that these God-stories happened everyday, all day. Just like I said through twitter this past week, "perception is a picture of reality, not the whole picture, just the part you stare at."