Common Miracles

Imagining a miracle, you probably think of something magical, impossible for homo sapiens to accomplish on their own, and unique. It is true that miracles are like magic and can’t be created by mankind. However, where I think most of us get it wrong is that miracles are not only unique events that occur infrequently.

A miracle is when a person is terminally ill but is cured, despite the fact that all the doctors have given up with nothing more in their bags of modern-medical tricks to save her. That's an uncommon miracle. It's one that grabs the attention of all the people that were praying for her in all parts of the country. It is one that confirms that there IS A GOD.

However, miracles … or shall we just call them magic … happen every moment of every day and are usually overlooked because they are so commonplace. If we just start to notice them, we will gain daily affirmation of the existence of our greater being.

It is like looking out your window and seeing a common brown sparrow flying around. It probably doesn’t grab your attention like, say, a hummingbird or, better yet, a bald eagle. They are all amazing creatures with the uncanny ability to propel themselves off a branch and remain midair, pushing themselves forward with the fluttering of their wings. But the bald eagle is more precious for you to witness because of its rare sightings.

Miracles are like that … the degree to which they are noticed is directly proportional to the rarity of the sighting.

Pretty amazing miracles happen all around us, every single day. If God didn't exist, a planted seed would do nothing. However, with His magic, sunshine and rain, springing forth, over time, that seed becomes a sunflower or oak tree or tomato plant? How the heck does that happen? What did the magician farmer have up his sleeve to make that transformation?

The tomatoes don’t taste anything like the dirt from which they were formed. There was NO yellow in either the seed nor the soil to suddenly appear on the sunflower. And where did the tree bark come from?

A lizard can grow a new tail if the old one gets lobbed off. Spiders can regrow missing legs. Sharks continually replace lost teeth. If any of those regenerations happened in a person, we would all be throwing our arms up and singing the praises of our Lord, only because they don’t commonly happen in humans. But, they happen in other creatures. Isn’t that magic? Isn’t that reason to throw our arms up?

I imagine God up there, the most amazing artist and scientist (dual major), creating all of His art pieces. He is making each one unique by using different media for every piece and engineering creative, new, interesting mechanics for how they will function.

God ruminating during his design creation must have sounded something like this: “The wolf will have fur and run on four legs. The snake will have scaly skin and won’t have legs so he’ll mobilize by, hmmm: slithering. Yes! Yes! And the turtle won’t need to get around quickly, so I will make him slow, but provide him a shell in which to protect himself. I'll even allow him to sleep underwater without needing air for hours. I’m GENIUS!!”

How fun it must have been for Him to create this planet and all of its inhabitants. And then, to give us all jobs to keep the planet functioning. “Okay, I’ll have bats keep a check on the mosquito population. Oh! And I’ll use squirrels and birds to plant the bigger seeds for me. Man will be the foreman … making sure everyone is doing their job and keeping the line running.”

Don't even get me started on the genius of God's "crop watering system." He magically evaporates water from areas where it is not needed and precipitates it back down in areas where it is needed. Not even David Copperfield could pull off that slight of hand!

So, when you're questioning the existence of God and feeling you need a miracle to confirm it, look no further than your fingertips that, when flipping a page in a book, have the amazing ability to distinguish the minute difference between one and two pages between them. Or the fact that the earth is spinning at 1,040 mph and we don't fly off or even feel the thrill of it. Or, most importantly, that there is this invisible, magical, driving force called "love" that brings people together, surrounds families and is the fodder for some of the best music.

Ours is an amazing artist/scientist/engineer/inventor (God for short). I won’t kid you. I have a greater appreciation for the rarer painted red, orange and purple sunset, but when I see the more common azure or even gray sky, I still know He has created a precious miracle for us and I am grateful for it.