In case you didn’t get to see the video fromMonday, August 3…
We all know the biblical stories of miraculous events, everything from Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding in Cana where he turned water into wine to feeding the multitudes, like we heard about yesterday; from healings to walking on water. How would you define what a miracle is? Merriam-Webster: An extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs. Dictionary.com: An effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause; such an effect or event manifesting or considered as a work of God. Vocabulary.com: A noun meaning “amazing or wonderful occurrence,” comes from the Latin miraculum “object of wonder.” Dig way back and the word derives from smeiros, meaning “to smile”.
Of course, we’ve heard amazing stories like this one from beliefnet.com: In March 2015, Lynn Jennifer Groesbeck, 25, lost control of her car and landed in the icy Spanish Fork River in Utah. Fourteen hours later, first responders found her 18-month-old daughter, Lily, in her car seat hanging upside down just above frigid river water. Prior to finding Lily, both police officers and firefighters report that they heard an adult voice yell “Help me!” from inside the car. They discovered that the voice could not have come from the young mother, who likely died from the impact. The rescuers still can’t explain the voice or how the girl survived hanging upside-down for 14 hours in freezing temperatures without being dressed for the cold.
Sometimes we hear of miraculous healings that are attributed to prayer, and that may well be true, but that also inevitably raises questions about why for this one and not for that one, for which there is no answer, leading many to disbelieve in miracles as fanciful stories. I wonder that if we only think of miracles in terms of grand divine intervention, or disbelieve altogether, less spectacular miracles might escape our notice, the so-called common miracles that occur right in front of us every single day. Like Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh observes: “People say that walking on water was a miracle. I think walking peacefully on the earth is a miracle.”
I watched a bird perched just outside the back door one morning last week, chirping away at what I’m assuming was its mate. It truly gave me a sense of wonder. What about the tenaciousness of tufts of grass stubbornly pushing their life up through asphalt of a parking lot? How about the simple act just of breathing…which isn’t so simple, but which we seldom think about as our autonomic nervous system just keeps us plugging along? Or think about a newborn baby; truly a miracle of life, and one the parents actually get to participate in.
It may well be simple or we may even come up with scientific explanation, but does that make it any less miraculous? Indeed, that we can understand the processes sometimes heightens the miraculousness of it. We can maybe explain what happens, but not how it happens in the first place; it’s just this amazing unfolding of life that occurs, not because we initiated it or can explain it, but just on its own, often without any intervention from us. It may well be feeding multitudes and walking on water, but it may just as well be walking peacefully on the earth; maybe just a chirping bird or a tuft of grass in a parking lot or your next breath – the common miracles that occur right in front of us every single day.
Marc+
