Everyday Miracles

Imagine with me a strange scenario.

Imagine you desperately need money. Hopeless, with no other options, you decide to pray. You pray for one hundred dollars.

Here’s where it gets strange…

What would be a better answer to your prayer? Option one: the hundred dollar bill miraculously floats down from the sky. Option two: a friend gives you one hundred dollars. Which option would you choose? Which would be more amazing? Which would have a greater impact on your life and faith?

I pose this strange scenario and ask these questions because I think we as believers always pray for option one, the miraculous. We want God’s direct intervention. We wish for unexplainable healings, for sudden upswings, for unlikely encounters…for hundred dollar bills falling from the sky.

But is that really what we want? I think not.

I believe sometimes in our quest for the big miracle we miss the better little miracles happening around us all the time.

Think about our absurd example again. At first, the miraculous money floating from the sky would amaze and even encourage us, but after a while, it would only be an old and cold bill of paper. However, if the “miracle” was that God daily stirred the heart of one of our friends to give us the money instead, with a hug and a word of encouragement too, would we not much more prefer that? I would.

I would welcome the infleshed act of kindness over the mysterious miracle. The everyday kindness of another is quite miraculous anyway in that God has changed someone’s heart and stirred them to sacrifice. Also, because we are flesh and blood creatures tied to our physical world, the infleshed miracle far exceeds any out-of-the-sky miracle. The infleshed miracle brings with it community, love, touch, and comfort.

Is it any wonder then that God invites us to be the ministers of his mercy? He is asking us to replay daily the miracle of incarnational mercy and grace. Could he zap us from the sky with grace and truth? Certainly! But he knows a better way. He remembers that we are dust, and so he metes out his mercy in palatable and very real ways.

So may you see the miraculous grace of God in your fellow man today. And may you be the miraculous grace of God to another today.

And I pray, whatever your circumstances, in one way or another, you get your miracle.