Miracles

I've been thinking about miracles a lot recently. So many various viewpoints. From, It is possible to see God in all things, so everything is, in a sense, a miracle. To, A miracle is when God intervenes in our lives or in history and suspends the laws of the physical universe in order to bring about a different outcome than the one that was expected. So which one is right?

Maybe if you tell me what it is you are struggling with I can help.

How about a straight answer.

I think you are forgetting the basic premise of this conversation: I only know what you know.

Alright. Let's talk about your miracles, specifically. I know you have said that there were lots of people who were sick and hungry and suffering but are you saying you didn't heal anybody?

I don't want to make trite statements about what happened. These were moments of grace. There was a stillness in the chaos for just a moment. The "fear of the Lord" is the beginning of wisdom, according to the prophets, and I think some people were afraid. But what I felt in those moments, and what the prophets meant, was not fear in the "scared of" sense, but awe.

But these were rare moments. There were also times when I felt frustrated and impotent. I couldn't save John, my own cousin. I couldn't protect my mother from heart-break. Miracles, whatever one calls them, didn't define who I was. They were not ordinary or common events; they were the exception. Moments when God's love and healing broke through directly. I felt it, others felt it.

God on Demand?

Sometimes people think that traveling with me meant that my followers lacked for nothing: food, shelter, courage. But that wasn’t how it was. The stories told about that time were always about single events and didn’t take into account the bigger picture.

I’m sorry, do you mean bigger picture in a philosophical sense?

No, I’m actually thinking about the geographical bigger picture. Let me explain. There were a lot of people in Palestine who were hungry, homeless, afraid, doubting, angry and abused; even just in Galilee itself there was a lot of suffering. And it didn’t go away while I lived there. There were also many storms on the Sea of Galilee; some while I preached on its shores. And sometimes they came and went very suddenly. Were they all miracles? Did the Father make us sea-sick one day and provide us with a magnificent catch the next?

The problem with the Gospels is the stories they don’t include.

Are you saying that you didn’t cure people or heal people?

I’m saying that even if I helped a few people there were many more I didn’t help, but their stories weren’t told. The Gospel writers wrote about the events that fit the beliefs they had formed about me. It might help today if readers of the Gospels consider the unwritten stories as well. Maybe then their expectations would be more realistic.