By my accounting, (God knows, I am no accountant) “miracles” account for about 2.5% of the Biblical narrative.
When I survey the roughly 4,000 years of history in Scripture, I count about 100 years where God is actively doing miracles – I mean the big stuff like parting seas, raising the dead, and healing people, not the everyday miracles we take for granted but are no less miraculous.
If you are a strict fundamentalist who sees the world as 6,000 years old, then I begin my accounting with the weeklong miracle-fest of creation. After creation, I think of God’s miraculous efforts with the flood in the days of Noah. I think of God’s activity in the days of Moses. I think of some really cool stuff in the days of Elijah and Elisha and a few sporadic displays of miraculous power scattered throughout the rest of the Old Testament. We can’t forget the three years of miracles of Jesus and the early church’s experience of the miraculous. All of this adds up to roughly 100 years of obvious miracle-making recorded in Scripture.
My point is this. Taken as a whole, miracles account for a small percentage of the faith journey. To put it bluntly, we might say that miracles are to faith what sex is to marriage – a small but important part of the package. Unfortunately, the Church, like myself, is equally awkward on both subjects. I share this for two reasons.
1. We are currently in that part of the church calendar known as “ordinary time.” Ordinary Time takes up most of our year and for good reason, I think. After all, most of us experience our lives as remarkably ordinary, perhaps even mundane – frustratingly mundane, almost maddeningly mundane. It is true that the miracle of Christmas and Easter can and do infuse our mundane, ordinary lives with the power of God and transform the ordinary into the extra-ordinary. This makes all the difference in the world, but if we are honest with ourselves, even Christmas and Easter often suffer from the weight of their own routines. Everyday life just feels, well…ordinary. It is where most of us live and it is here, in the valley of ordinariness, that we search for a faith that allows us to live our ordinary lives.
2. This one is harder. I see a lot of pain and violence that needs healing – some of it is my own. I see a lot of people crying out, desperate for the miraculous touch of God. They are not in the valley of ordinariness. They are in the pit of despair. How am I to teach and preach Good News in the pit of despair if the miraculous move of God is a mere 2.5% of the overall picture? The odds are as bad as the conditions in which many people live. That leaves a lot of people with no relief and me with a lot of questions. The bottom line is that I want God to recalibrate his economy. I mean, would it be so bad if God upped his percentages a little? Why not 10% or maybe 25%? Heck, what’s wrong with 50%? Would that be so bad? Why is God so damn restrained and humble?
I do not pretend to know the mind of God on this stuff, nor am I prepared to blame the 2.5% on our lack of faith and in doing so add yet another burden our already burdened lives. I have, however, found a small but important way forward in the Gospel of John.
John records the miracles of Jesus as “signs.” In fact, he records seven signs. Apparently for John, a miracle is a sign that points, not to itself, but to the reality of God and God’s kingdom. Its value is in its ability to point us to Christ. John is suggesting that miracles, however important they are to those who experience them, are not an end, in and of themselves. This, of course, is their danger. The bright light of the miraculous easily blinds us to the Miracle Maker. We begin to chase the miracle rather than the one to whom the miracles points. In this sense, miracles and sex are a lot alike. Perhaps this has something to do with why God shows so much restraint.
And yet there is little comfort in this explanation. I am still trying to understand God’s holy restraint when there is so much suffering. I am struggling to imagine the kind of love that not only produces miracles in the first place, but then restrains itself from its own abilities. What does God see that I can’t?
And so I limp along in my ordinary life with my ordinary faith made possible by the extraordinary miracle of God’s resurrection presence in Christ and I wonder to myself, if God’s restraint is an invitation to the rest of us to share the miracle of life?
Kris Rocke
Serves as director of Center for Transforming Mission
Bumps into Reality by accident, most of the time
Heard God laugh once
Comments (1)
I have discovered that there are a lot more miracles around us than we see. We are looking for the spectacular and God is constantly at work in the mundane. I have a sister with brain cancer. Actually, she has had brain cancer for over 30 years. When she was first in the hospital, I spent about six weeks by her bed. I learned a lot about miracles. I wanted the "get out of bed and you are totally healed" miracle. He was healing relationships, her own spirit, even physically healing in small ways. I almost missed it. I have railed at Him over the years wanting the big stuff. But nearly every day I see Him doing something that blows me away. I have seen Him heal people, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I have seen people come to Him I never would have believed would turn to Him. I have seen Him change a heart I thought was totally hard. Maybe the greatest miracle is in keeping us from losing faith when life is tough, when we can hardly put one foot in front of another. Maybe the miracle is in seeing God in ordinary life....in opening our eyes to what is going on around us...I think we miss the every day miracles because we look for the spectacular....maybe I need different eyes...I wonder???
Posted by Barb Demolar | February 20, 2008 3:04 AM
Posted on February 20, 2008 03:04