The Mundane Miraculous

This post follows from Paulfg’s post of today. Something that only happens to “important Christians”, and a brief exchange of comments that followed between us.

I was reminded of a sermon I heard a while back, where the Pastor stood to his pulpit, and authoritatively declared…

“There are only 156 miracles in the entire Bible!”

(If my memory does not betray me… it was 150-Something… I think 6… but I could be off by 4 in either direction, so forgive me.)

He knew this because he had counted them… or some author had and it was in his book… or some professor had and it was taught in his seminary… but anyway… God only intervened miraculously in the history of man 150-whatever times! He was certain of this, because such events would have been so significant (being so rare), that certainly Scripture would have noted additional episodes.

He then went on, in a series of sermons, to show that each of these miracles had the same “prerequisites”, a list of requirements and conditions, that man had to fulfill in order for God to act… and how and why we fail to fulfill them in our miracle-free lives. (Because there’s only 150-whatever!)

The preaching series was actually quite good. The exhortation, the scholarship and exegesis, the encouragement… all really excellent. But there was a flaw… a crucial flaw… that, while I know listeners were blessed and edified by their attention, equally I know this grieved the Father’s heart.

As so often, the problem is in the premise. That first course of bricks is uneven, it may not mean that the wall will be insecure, but the cosmetic flaw may persist throughout.

Here, the flawed premise is actually a “Scriptural Problem”. It is all well and good to say that someone went cover to cover through the Bible and located 150-something recorded incidents wherein God miraculously intervened in human affairs. But that leaves out (at least) one critical verse.

“And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.” [John 21:25]

I offer you, Gentle Reader, a simple question: Have you, personally, ever witnessed or taken part in a “miracle”?

You don’t need to put your hand up, write in, or identify yourself… so there’s no danger here. But truth be told, most people who feel led to read anything like this blog have witnessed or taken part in a surprising number of miracles. Now, I’m not going to get bogged down in issues of “operational definition”, or “juridical specificity”. (I used to, once upon a time. For me, a “miracle” was “any event with a probability of 10,000:1 against, or less.” I kid thee not… it was a very young and exploratory time for me, God challenged me to “name my fleece”, I did… and He just smothered me in events so vastly beyond the probable or likely, that even my doubting self had to admit that it was He doing what He was doing.)

No, this morning I just want to make a simple point in follow up and affirmation of “a ripple” that arose in and from Paul’s post…

We are often accustomed to such “separation of church and state”, that it bleeds over into a pernicious “separation of God from daily life”. Whether morality, mood, love, relationships, or spiritual warfare… we tend to think of “God stuff” in big, overblown, “Ten Commandments — Charleton Heston — Moses/Exodus” terms, rather than the simple day-to-day living we walk through or that we see Jesus walking through among His Companion Disciples.

When I was a young novice, the very first challenge I was given (besides the trial of obedience in general)… but the first real “spiritual” challenge I was given… was to learn to “see God in all things”. Now, that SOUNDS easy, but try it sometime, even on a “day off” away from the office or workplace.

To SEE God, as a vibrant and active participant, in every moment. Setting a table, weeding a garden, sweeping a floor, doing homework, making your bed or doing laundry. Got that down? Great… now add a layer. Driving to work through rush hour traffic. Getting bad service from a fast-food drive-through. See what I mean? It’s challenging!

Now, please bear in mind… just because we CAN come to SEE Him, doesn’t mean we will always respond appropriately to His presence! It just means we are the more likely to address Him, our behavior, our selves… in moments even when we expose our frailties and faults.

And that’s pretty much it, the wrap up, to the ripples I found from Paul’s dropped pebble. That “spiritual warfare” certainly can be the stuff of heroic opera, but it is also the mundane and simple struggle between selfishness and servanthood reflected in gracious kindness, or sour curmudgeonry.

The cosmic and Wagnerian grand scale is all well and good. But the battle between Light and darkness isn’t so much a matter of “Strategies and Objectives of a Grand War”, as much as it is all about “Relationship”.

Do we receive the Love of Jesus?

Do we reflect the Love of Jesus back to God?

Do we refract the Love of Jesus through and around us to others?

THAT is the Spiritual Warfare of the Battle between Light and darkness, Good and evil, God and the enemy. Every moment yielded to love, to grace, to God (thus His will)… is a “blow struck for Light” in that War. Every selfish moment grumbling at our pitiful lacks, or the unworthiness of another… is not an affirmation of Light. That simple.

Sins are simple things… to treat another as less than sacred. Miracles are equally simple things… the expressions of God, His love, His grace, from His heart and hands into our lives.

As I listened to that Pastor that day, declare so authoritatively that God performed (precisely) 150-something miracles, I just had to smile and shake my head a bit sadly…

I wanted to pick up a phone, call him up, saying… “Oh, my dear son! Every BREATH we take, is a miracle. Every heartbeat! Don’t believe me? Too much “science” involved there? Well, ‘science’ can tell us when someone is ‘alive’ versus ‘dead’… but it cannot explain why that is so. No scientist can (thus far) begin with inorganic compounds in a laboratory, and create ‘living tissue’ from it. Even the great strides being made with tissue culturing, no one can yet ‘breathe life’ into a cultured organ, granting it ‘humanity’ or ‘consciousness’ as a person

“Hold a newborn in your arms, and tell me that is not miracle? See a person first see the grace and love of God pierce the misery and history of their life, see their tears of joy and newly discovered freedom as they first embrace Christ, and tell me that is not a miracle? Think of the love of a couple whose hearts have grown closer over 50 years, or the love of the widowed yet in love after separation of decades, and tell me that is not a miracle?”

I wanted to say such things, but I did not. “Grace”… the kind of “gentle touch of God’s hand” involved in such miracles as these… it is hard to see. It takes a bit of practice. Like finding a subtle flavor in a fine wine, a tea, or a delightful dish… it takes time and practice to train the palate. Not everyone can take a year to get apart, be silent, and learn to hear the singing of Creation.

But God is right here all the time, and He is ever about revealing Himself. So, let each of us enjoy that, and develop the sensitivity to touch, the discerning palate, the sensitivity to fragrance… that we learn to perceive Him, His love, His grace, and His miraculous Presence… everywhere and everywhen.

Amen

Grace to thee — The Little Monk