On Miracles...

Open my eyes so I can see
what You show me of your miracle-wonders. - Psalm 119:18 (The Message)

"Got my face pressed up against the nursery glass
She's sleepin' like a rock
My name on her wrist
Wearin' tiny pink socks
She's got my nose, she's got her mama's eyes
My brand new baby girl
She's a miracle
I saw God today"- George Strait

There are people who will tell you that miracles don't happen any more. Even some theologians will say that the act of performing miracles was reserved for the time and place while the Bible was being written and that God chooses now to use people to carry out his purpose, rather than performing miracles.

My personal view is that I see miracles all the time. When I see a couple that's stayed together through lots of hard times and marriages crumbling all around, I see a miracle. When I see people healed who had a 50, 30, 20, 10% or less chance of surviving and today they're cancer-free, that's a miracle. And, yes, the birth of a brand new baby is nothing short of a miracle. Think about all that has to happen for a baby to be born. First, a man and woman have to find each other, among all the billions of people that are alive. Then they have to get together and, ahem, procreate at just the right time under just the right conditions, and somehow one of his frisky little swimmers has to not only find his way upstream into the right tube, but then have enough energy left to find and penetrate that single, solitary egg. Next, cells have to divide and divide and divide until they start to look like something, and the mother has to feed and nourish herself along with the baby, and not do anything too strenuous for nine+ months and the baby has to survive all sorts of viruses, bacteria, and other ickies to which it may be exposed. Then, finally, when the time is right (but not before), it starts to push it's way out and the mother gets to the hospital even though the dad is a total wreck and forgets her bag and the doctors and nurses know just what to do even when the cord is wrapped around its neck and the right foot comes out first. Whew! It's a miracle any of us are here, right?

I think the real reason so many of us don't believe in miracles is because we've become so accustomed to seeing things in a practical, scientific light that we can find an explanation for just about any supernatural thing that happens. If someone is cured, that medicine must really work (even if it didn't work for the last person who took it). If we run into someone at just the right time- right when they needed a friend- and we can encourage them, it's a coincidence. Coincidence gets way too much credit in our modern society.

Don't get me wrong. I know a lot of people who say "everything happens for a reason" and I'm not one of them. I don't think everything happens for a reason. I think sometimes your son grounds out because he just didn't swing the bat very well. Sometimes your daughter fails a test because she didn't study. It doesn't have to be God trying to teach you a lesson. But, I do believe that God is telling a story with our lives, and each story has a theme that runs througout. And, God will use events in our lives to carry out this theme. Sometimes, we get so far out of the story, that it takes a miracle to get us back where we belong.

Sometimes we get way too sick, and God still has other chapters to write, so he needs to write us back in. So, he sends just the right doctor with just the right training at just the right time so we can live to fight another day. Or sometimes, we take our identity as sinners too far, and we start to wreck a marriage or a family or a career that God needs to tell our story. And God will use a miracle to heal that situation.

My prayer is like that of the Psalmist. God, open my eyes so I can see what you show me of your miracle-wonders.