Miracles Happen?!?!

As I sit in my office this morning I find myself compelled to share something with all you Christians out there. What I want to talk to you about is miracles. As all of you know I have been sick and I would certainly love to be blessed by miraculous healing.  In fact I hear this desire for a miracle every time I talk to someone who is sick (as a Pastor that happens a lot).

We hear a lot about miracles in our world today. In fact many of us at one time or another will come to a point in our lives when we need/when we want a miracle.

I’ve got good news for you. God is still in the business of working miracles. I have been spending some time thinking about what is a Miracle?

My first thought was that miracles are amazing – so when someone gives DawnMarie and I a plant and it is still alive a few weeks later then that would be a miracle right!?!? No. It may be amazing. But it is no miracle. It is amazing that someone could hike the whole Appalachian trail, but it is no miracle. A parking place that is closer than 5 rows back from the front doors to target is pretty amazing and extremely rare, but it would be no miracle.

You see miracles are something that can’t be explained! I saw a news report on Friday about a man who damaged the cornea of his eye, and he lost his eye-sight. He went to a specialist at John Hopkins that made a lens to fix his damaged eye, and as soon as it was inserted, he could see again. When the patient was telling about his experience, he ended with these words: “It’s a miracle!”

Was it a miracle? No, because how it happened can be explained with the understanding of modern medicine. Amazing and wonderful, but not a miracle.

It seems to me that a miracle has to be something that is rare, if you look through the pages of the Bible, you will not have to look very hard to find miracles – and lots of them. Well then how can I say that miracles are rare? If we were to go back and search through that whole bible we would find reference to perhaps 37 miracles performed by Jesus and perhaps 80+ other miracles in the Old and New Testament.  That’s 117+ miracles spread out over thousands of years, which makes miracles rare.

Anything that is rare is valuable and precious and has great significance.

Our temptation for one reason or another is to turn everything into a miracle. You see when you call everything amazing a miracle, then you cheapen the value of miracles.

It’s kind of like what we do with the word “love”. We use it very flippantly. We say things like, “I love my new car, and I love that Chinese place on the corner, and I love chicken sausage.” And then I turn to my wife, DawnMarie and I say, “I love you.”

And that gives her all kind of warm fuzzies????

I mean, think about it – I’ve just told her that I feel the same emotion for her that I feel for a piece of pig intestine that has been stuffed with ground chicken.

Can I make a suggestion to you? When you see a beautiful new pair of shoes, or you hear about a confluence of events that resulted in two long lost friends reuniting, call it a wonder. They are a natural result of the laws that God set into motion when He created the universe. Call them amazing. Call them incredible. But don’t call them miracles.

Miracles are rare. Miracles are special.

Miracles don’t happen that often. So don’t get mad when you don’t get one. Instead live in His grace every day, accepting the life you been blessed with.The alternative is to spend every moment hoping that something might happen, while missing everything that is happening around you.