Miracles

This past week, our prayer group had a discussion about miracles. Defined as an “extraordinary and welcome event that… is attributed to a divine agency” or “a remarkable event or development that brings very welcome consequences” (OED), I asked folks to consider what miracles they had seen recently.

One direction we went in was to share the experience of nature—the birdsong in morning, the tree passed on a daily walk, even the cold fierce wind blowing in the face. While miracles are often considered to be beyond the scope of nature, the physical world’s complexities and interconnectedness are, for many, a miracle in themselves.

Personally, I think that miracle should be celebrated: as we discover more and more each day about the beauty and intricacy of the created order, whether it’s a child watching a bug or a scientist revealing gravitational waves, we are mesmerised and awed by the extent of God’s great creation.

Nature, beautiful and fierce, known and unknown, interconnected and interdependent, is something that is not fully explicable by science or logic. The first account of creation has God proclaiming goodness and blessing every day, and adding the “Very Good” on the sixth day not as a qualitative assessment of that day’s work, but to declare the completeness of creation.

The miracle is there, if we will just see it.

The second commentary on miracles had us talking babies! So much more than 10 fingers and 10 toes, our bodies are astonishing physical beings; that we can see God ‘knit us together in our mothers’ wombs’ (Ps 139) is beyond anything we can imagine.

We spoke on the continuity of a child’s “miracle” status. While tiny, we don’t hesitate to name them thus; however as they grow older we use the moniker less frequently. Yet are we not just as human at the age of 5, 25, 85, as we were at birth? If we can see and celebrate the miracle of God present in a babe, we ought to seek the same extent of divine blessing in everyone we connect with—every child that is well behaved and those that are not; every adult we get along with and those we don’t. Whatever their age and personality, they are made beloved of and blessed by God—a miracle.

The miracle is there, if we will just see it.

We, as humans, are miracles; though sometimes we take this for granted. Nature, the created world, is a miracle; though sometimes we can’t see it for what it is.

We are miracles living within miracles.

One only hopes we might live our lives faithfully and joyfully responding to this reality, in how we treat one another and the world, ever thanking God for the privilege and opportunity given to us.