What would you expect from a miracle? Go on, be honest with yourself.
In contrast, how often have you said (likely flippantly), “Well, that’s bit of a miracle!”
Sometimes I do wonder if we expect “miracles” to always be trumpet-fanfare-impossible-according-to science events. But what if that ignores some of the most powerful and amazing miracles of grace and love which transform our lives and the world without ever actually violating the laws of physics? Feeding the five thousand and water into wine are indeed far beyond the experience of most of us, and thus we categorise them as “impossible and therefore a miracle”. Indeed, CS Lewis comments along the lines that God made the Universe run on certain laws and thus tends to make interference in those laws a rarity for good reason.
However, I would like to offer that miracles may be a little more frequent and small-scale and “ordinary” than we might think. I remember being told when I was young that a coincidence is when God works a miracle and decides to stay anonymous. The phone call from a dear friend that comes at exactly the moment it is most needed, when we are in tears and struggling. The person who turns up and offers to help when we are in crisis. The cheque that appears providing the money desperately needed to pay a bill, just in time. The fact that when a terrorist drove into a crowd, there were far fewer deaths than might be expected because one of the vehicles passing at the time was an ambulance.
Are these answers to prayer, or random coincidences? Miracles, or serendipity? Is it merely our perspective and faith (or lack of it) which determines which label we stick on them?
Quite often people tell me that they can’t bring themselves to believe the miracles in the bible. I sympathise with that – they are extraordinary. I admit that I cannot imagine how those things happened. My mind simply does not stretch that far. However paradoxically that is exactly the point. If I could imagine them, if I could see how it would work, then it would not be a miracle. Despite all evidence and science to the contrary, instead of saying that I do not believe it because it is impossible, instead I say that it is “impossible”, but I still believe that by God’s grace it could have happened. Arguably my – or your – existence in this exact time and place is no less a miracle than any of those happenings. The difference is that we think we can explain our existence through biological processes – though I’d argue that doesn’t totally cover how the individual consciousness that is “me” or “you” comes into co-existence with our physical bodies.
Every day, unexpected and unpredictable blessings and coincidences occur. When I pray, and ask for God’s help in my daily tasks, I find those blessings and coincidences increase. When I don’t pray, I find the days are harder, and the coincidences, blessings, and mini miracles are few or non-existent. I wonder, would life appear a little more wonderful and “magical” if, instead of dismissing miracles as illusions or impossibilities to the rational mind, we allow ourselves a little more mental space, and permit the inexplicable to exist and to bless us, without having to know precisely and exactly how it came about. Perhaps a little mystery is good for us, not least because it tends to being about a gratitude for that which we cannot explain or control, but which also brings us unexpected blessings and transforms our lives, our situations, and our selves.
How many miracles will happen for you this week, if you ask God, and then let yourself be open to the answers?
Image by Alana Jordan from Pixabay