Common Miracles

Common miracles are so blended into nature that naturalists/humanists feel they are part of nature. Perhaps they are, but many of them have the stamp of some angelic inference that the benefitted person or persons feel compelled to recognize – that some extra-natural quality may attend a matter.  I have sensed it with intensity in timing.  The coordination of events, the unexpected provision, the moment of resolution, the escape from a dangerous situation, and the like – all seem like common miracles, like remission.  For example, persons who do not believe in the opening of the Jordan River bed for the Israelites to pass over, point out that there have been landslides on several occasions that dammed the river for some days until overflow permitted return to the traditional flow of the river.  If that occurred, in behalf of the invasion by the Israelites, the miracle was related to timing.  The unusual interruption happened just as nearly a million persons gathered along the shore.  (It was not a muddy crossing, in that the people crossed the expanse on dry ground.  If the temporary break in the river flow were due to natural cause, the river bed would remain resistant to passage.)  The story of the event was that it was at flood time, that the priests’ feet were wet with the meeting of water to the shore, and the Israelites crossed on dry ground.  As it has been understood in history, the story appears to have continuity in it so to hold up as miracle with details verifying it.  Biblical stories are like that – as when Peter and John enter the open tomb of Jesus.  The assumption was that the body had been stolen, which, if true, would present some disturbance of the physical scene inside the tomb.  Peter didn’t catch it at first, John did.  The head-wrapping of Jesus was collapsed separate from the body-wrapping.  A stolen body would not have gained the collapse of grave cloth.  Resurrection was the solemn meaning of the miracle of the head napkin.  The disciples entered the tomb believing there was some chicanery, they left it believing: He is risen.

It is likely that virtually every person has experienced something of silent miracles.  Was there some visitation to my mother the night the doctor expected me, at six months of age, to die; or for my little daughter born prematurely and kept for weeks at the hospital (but now a grandmother) when the doctor promised me his purpose was to save only the life of my wife; and, the list grows long in my experiences for either my own interests or those of others.  Who can say?  I must admit that I have had, on such occasions, an irresistible and compelling desire to thank God for what seems like silent (unheralded) miracles.  God is alive and well to take care of his children, children by creation for some but additionally redemptive for others, in both contexts of truancy and faithfulness.  If alert to the pattern we are likely to develop some sort of devotion and spiritual perception – perhaps what we call a humanistic religion born not of faith but found in the humility of the race – believing there is something-out-there more intelligent and greater.  Our concern is to make sure the concept is effective for the ongoing of the whole of life, both natural and spiritual to meet the highest hopes that are absorbed in genuine faith.  For the Christian there is only one answer that is found in the redemptive story of Jesus Christ.  (One of my favorite silent miracles is the comfortable ride Jesus took on an unbroken colt from the top of the hill into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.)  I wonder if there are not many miracles every day covered or made anonymous by words like remission, oversight, nature, magic, happenchance, accident, even generalities of amorphous uncertain meaning to nature like, providence, angels, even god (lower case indicating uncertainty, unidentifiable deity).

As readers of these Pages discover, I find life as proof of God.  Life is his special grant visited on his natural creation.  Without that life the natural creation has no meaning other than for the enjoyment of God bowling with planets.  It relates to the art of God with its own forming related to divine methodologies.  He can permit his great nature-land to do whatever it wants to do in the velocity and characteristics of movement, pressure, light, gravity, orbits, substance (such as air/land, fire and water) want to do.  When he placed life on his property, he also provided care for its ultimate safety.  Life is a miracle in nature for God’s pleasure.  It is unbelievable to me that he would abandon it to our shabby ways.