Introspection: The World Is a Miracle

I share these thoughts, hoping they are of help to someone else.

The World Is a Miracle

Scripture:

Jesus performed many other wondrous signs that are not written in this book. These accounts are recorded so that you, too, might believe that Jesus is the Anointed, the Liberating King, the Son of God, because believing grants you the life He came to share.

John 20:30-31 (The Voice)

You light - light - light up the sky

You light up the sky to show me You are with me

And I - I - I can't deny

No, I can't deny that You are right here with me

You've opened my eyes

So I can see You all around me

You light - light - light up the sky

You light up the sky to show me

That You are with me

From "Light Up the Sky" by The Afters

In the year 2011, on the evening of February 13, a Sunday, I found myself sitting in a pew in the chapel at Furman University. I had struggled with the decision of whether or not to attend the service that evening because I had heard that the message would be about love and marriage. Though I figured such a message would have nothing to do with me, I ultimately decided it might do me some good to hear it anyway. As I looked inside the bulletin, I noticed that, at the end of the service, everyone in the congregation would receive a flower. "God," I thought, "You have some sense of humor."

After the chaplaincy intern finished her sermon, she invited everyone in the congregation to come forward to the front of the chapel to receive a flower. When I approached her, she handed me a pink one. I walked back to my seat, laughing on the inside.

For reasons I will not divulge at this time, that event was very significant in my life. For me, receiving a pink flower on the day before Valentine's Day during that particular time in my life was truly uncanny.

In fact, I can only describe the event as miraculous.

In The Barbarian Way, Erwin McManus tells the story of a miracle he experienced when he was in college. His friend Beth has just confessed to him that she doesn't believe that God really loves her, so he tries to reassure her of God's love by telling her that God will do whatever it takes to prove God's love to her. She then says, "Well, then I want it to snow." For some reason Erwin replies, "God is going to make it snow for you... within twenty-four hours." Regretting what he has just said, he goes back to his dorm room and falls asleep praying, begging God to make it snow for Beth. After a few hours, his roommate returns, wakes him up, and tells him to look outside. Snow was everywhere.¹

While I have never experienced an answer to prayer quite like Erwin's, I have experienced other answers to prayer that could be considered miraculous. A few years ago, I spent months praying for God to deliver me from a bad job situation. One Tuesday morning in May of 2009, I learned that my boss had decided to consolidate offices and to move all operations to another state. This news gave me a legitimate reason to end my employment with that company.

Another small miracle happened to me around four years ago. I lost my temper over something I no longer remember and broke the mouse I was using with my laptop. I drove to a nearby department store and shelled out twenty dollars to buy a new one. As I drove back home, feeling thoroughly disgusted with myself, I began to wonder if there was any hope for me at all. At that very moment, I changed the radio station and heard the chorus to the song "To Bring You Back" by Paul Alan:

I left the ninety-nine to find the one

And you're the one

I walked a thousand miles in the desert sun

Only to bring you back

I felt as though God was speaking directly to me at that moment. It was as though God was telling me that I was the lost sheep that Christ, the Good Shepherd, had gone out of His way to find. It was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment.

So do all of these stories really describe modern-day miracles? The mystic in me says yes, but my analytical side says that there are alternative explanations.

Let's deconstruct that last story. At that time, at least one of the presets on my car radio was a Christian rock station, and it was not uncommon for me to change the radio station while driving by randomly pressing the preset buttons. Some common themes of Christian music are love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness. All these things considered, it was not unlikely that I would have heard an uplifting message while listening to the radio in my car.

So did God speak to me in that desperate moment through the song I heard on the radio?

Or would I have heard such a message anyway because I just happened to change the radio station to a Christian rock station?

The other stories I mentioned all have explanations apart from the supernatural. When a young Erwin McManus prayed for snow, did God send snow to prove God's love for Erwin's friend, or was snow on its way regardless of whether or not it held any spiritual significance at all? When I prayed for God to lead me out of a bad job situation, did God put it in my boss's head to move operations out of state, or did the trajectory of the company simply give me an opportunity to leave my job behind? Did God sent me a pink flower on the day before Valentine's Day to tell me that that the pain and disappointment in my past did not have to define my future, or was it all just a really big coincidence?

Were all of these events miracles orchestrated by God?

Or can they all be chalked up to lucky breaks, coincidences, and natural phenomena?

To be honest, I really don't know.

Then again, maybe these are the wrong questions to ask in the first place.

The Gospel According to St. John records seven miracles performed by Jesus Christ before His crucifixion and resurrection. Christ, in His earthly ministry, transformed water into wine, healed a boy with a terminal illness, enabled a crippled man to walk again, fed thousands of people with a kid's sack lunch, walked on liquid water, gave the gift of sight to a man born blind, and raised a close friend from the dead.² The other three Gospels record Christ performing similar miracles, and other parts of the Bible describe other miraculous acts performed directly by God or through one of God's prophets.

But what is a miracle? So often we think of a miracle as some remarkable occurrence that contradicts human logic or defies the laws of nature - the parting of a sea to allow a tribe of people to cross on dry land, the pregnancy of a virgin, the healing of a person with a terminal illness. Perhaps a miracle doesn't have to be anything so extravagant. Albert Einstein has been quoted as saying, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is." Maybe miracles are all around us all the time, though we don't even realize it.

Nearly two years ago, I lost my glasses at the bottom of a waterfall, so I had to wear old glasses for nearly a week. When I finally got my new glasses, I was overwhelmed by the vivid detail with which I could see.³ It seemed miraculous. I jokingly remarked that if I had seen a sunset at that moment I would have cried.

Lately, when I take walks at my alma mater, I have found myself praying for breezes to give me relief from the summer heat. I have also found myself thanking God when cool breezes do indeed come my way.

Many Christians believe in the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, the idea that God created the entire universe out of nothing.  Theologian Michael Lodahl suggests, as an alternative, the idea of creatio ex amore or creation out of love, suggesting that the creation of the universe is an outgrowth of God's loving nature.⁴ With that in mind, maybe everything God has created can be understood as a sign of God's love.

Consider the miracles of Jesus. Whether He was providing wine for people at a wedding party, healing a person with a terminal illness or a disability, feeding a multitude of people with a minimal amount of food, or raising a friend from the dead, He was showing love to people. In The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales, Peter Rollins notes that the true significance of a miracle is not some change in the physical universe but a change within a person's heart.⁵ The miraculous acts of Jesus transformed people's lives in profound ways.

Perhaps we experience a miracle whenever our senses are awakened to the love of God that is all around us all the time, whether we experience this love in some amazing event that defies reason or in a simple everyday occurrence like a sunset, a flower, the vivid green of leaves in the spring, the singing of a bird, or a cool breeze on a hot day.

In the 1999 drama American Beauty, teenage videophile Ricky is able to see beauty all around him, and he seeks to capture this beauty on film. At one point in the movie he shows his muse Jane what he calls "the most beautiful thing [he] ever filmed" - a plastic bag blown around by the wind. He describes the bag as dancing and compares it to "a little kid begging [him] to play with it." He goes on to say, "That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things and this incredibly benevolent Force that wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid, ever." Ricky saw the love of God in something as simple as a bag tossed by the wind.

On that night I found encouragement in the song I heard on the radio, maybe I experienced a miracle regardless of whether or not God caused the disk jockey at the radio station to play the song at that exact moment. Christian radio stations always play songs with uplifting messages, but the things that inspire these songs, namely God's love, mercy, and grace, are always present as well. Maybe the miracle is that God used that song to open my senses to this love, mercy, and grace when I needed most to be aware of them.

Do miracles really happen? I believe so. Maybe miracles happen all around us, all the time, whether we recognize them or not. Maybe the whole world is a miracle, and maybe everything God created is a sign that points us to God's steadfast love if we will only stop and take notice.


Notes:
1 - Erwin Raphael McManus. The Barbarian Way: Unleash the Untamed Faith Within. 2005, Nelson Books. pp 71-77
2 - John 2:1-11; 4:46-54; 5:1-9; 6:1-14; 6:16-21; 9:1-7; 11:1-45
3 - See my introspection "Through My Glasses, Darkly"
4 - Homebrewed Christianity: "The Creatio Ex Nihilo Debate!" 05/25/2012
5 - Peter Rollins. The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales. 2009, Paraclete Press. pp 168-173


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