I looked up from my computer into their wonder-filled eyes, saucer round and big.
“The light went off,” reported the six-year-old girl.
“All by itself,” her five-year-old brother chimed in–breathless.
They were over with their parents, who were downstairs participating in a Bible study. The two children had been playing quietly in the living room while I was beating against a wall of blogger’s block in the family room. Their choice of words and the frightened looks on their faces revealed they believed something more than a light bulb burning out had occurred. They followed me cautiously back into the living room.
I made a beeline through the dark living room for the offending lamp. It has a timer that turns it on and off. The recent time change had discombobulated it. I simply turned it back on. Relief and disappointment mingled on their faces. They were hoping for more. A miracle? Or at least a profound mystery.
So it is with us adults too. We encounter things we don’t quite understand–a coincidental happening, an answer to prayer, a remission the doctors can’t account for, a book or blog or friend delivering just the words of encouragement we needed, or something more. And in our hearts mingle fear and wonder as we step into the dark room of mystery.
We want an explanation and we don’t. We’re afraid understanding the mechanism of a miracle will unmake it. But miracles and mysteries are not made or unmade by our understanding them.
That God used doctors and medicine to heal me of my childhood seizures is no less miraculous than if they simply ceased one day through the administration of prayer. I am still healed. Natural and logical events manipulated by the hand of God are no less wonderful than those we would call supernatural.
Miracles that seem to have no natural source are not better than others. This is fallacy.
This may come from another fallacious belief: that understanding equals control. We may understand the miracle of the earth rotating around the sun and the sun providing warmth and life to us. But we will never control it. Understanding such things only gives us a better trail to their source. God!
In his best-selling novel, Peace Like a River, Leif Enger plays with the idea of miracles. Reuben, the narrator, is in need of one but is struggling to believe in them.
“My sister, Swede,” says Reuben, “who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed–though ignoring them will change you also. Swede said another thing, too, and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here’s what I saw. Here’s how it went. Make of it what you will.”
I like this. Miracles are to be witnessed, told, whether they are dissected or not. And most of all miracles are a change agent of God.
In the story of Jesus healing the man of a demon named Legion, Jesus tells the fearful and wonder-filled man, “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.”
Jesus does not tell him to explain it, understand it, or make more of it than it is. He is simply to tell about it.
Living spiritually has at its core a call to see life as miraculous. To see and tell what the Lord has done for you. From the eggs on your breakfast plate to the disappearance of a tumor.
Leif Enger using Reuben Land’s voice again: “We see a newborn moth unwrapping itself and announce, Look, children, a miracle! But let an irreversible wound be knit back to seamlessness? We won’t even see it, though we look at it every day.”
What miracle are you looking at today?
Understanding Miracles
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Thanks for your patience and your reader/friendship.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 [ Everything Has Its Time ]
“To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven:”
It’s all good,… hope you’re doin’ well,… I eavesdropped on a couple of sermons on the church web-site, just to feel “in the loop”, not too long ago,… it was very nice!
Thanks, G-A. That is the passagre I used at a memorial service on Wednesday. I am doing well. God os faithful and good. But many things going on. And thanks for eves dropping.
It’s a time for resting/sitting back and thanking God for ALL His astonishing miracles and wonders of simple living, loving and being,… taking time to notice and give Him credit for it ALL,… we can find great relief and joy in acknowledging our nothingness in comparison to His Greatness,… something “moderns” easily lose track of,… but Truth IS Truth nonetheless,… God IS Good,… and He IS our Father,… we are the tenderly beloved sheep of His pasture,… Happy Thanksgiving!,… wishing you ALL Special Blessings in the coming Church seasons of Advent and Christmas,… (just in case you’re Very Busy and “out of touch” for a looooong time!),… (-:
(p.s.: sometimes we’re very quiet because we’re busy digesting and absorbing some big mouthfuls of “experience and growth” that we’ve been doing,… no problema!)
Something like a wife’s heart condition, takotsubo syndrome, little known, just described and not common, but scary. But the miracles of modern medicine that God has engineered through our physicians are there staring us in the face and available. The Master Physician delivers them somehow miraculously to us. The newly improved and higher resolution ECHO cardiogram and new chemistries like BNP (just two years ago this protein was discovered) to determine varying degrees of heart faiure. Yes,I think they are miraculous and not just coincidental discoveries of medical science.
John: Amen. Thank you for putting specifics to this truth. And we are keeping you in our prayers.
Eugene,
Thanks for writing. A couple thoughts to ponder…
CS Lewis wrote that a miracle is Iinterference with nature by a supernatural power (in his book Miracles). Obviously, to interfere with natural law may not necessarily mean to break the natural law.
It’s very interesting that a common word used for miracle in the New Testament can also be translated “sign.” So one way we probably should think of a miracle is a sign that God uses to point to Himself; the same way we follow signs to find a museum or an airport.
Walk blessed, my friend.
Dan Weidman
Well said, Dan. Have a wonderfu Thanksgiving.