I remember going to Sunday school as a child and being regaled by biblical stories of miracles. The feeding of the masses with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish, the healing of the afflicted, and the resurrection of the dead. It’s easy to assume that those are merely inspirational tales and that such things don’t really happen – especially not in the 21st century. We’re much too sophisticated to believe such mythology anymore. Perhaps we shouldn’t be so cynical.
In fact, the hand of God is at work all around us – sometimes in obvious ways, and many times much more mysteriously. We’ve simply become so distracted by our own affairs that we don’t notice the miracles happening around us every day. If you don’t believe in divine intervention, explain this story aired by Inside Edition.
A man experiencing a seizure is on a collision course with a car driven by a priest – Father John Bok. The out-of-control car is vaulted over the priest’s car by a random steel pole – that just happens to be in precisely the right location with exactly the strength needed to protect both drivers. Had the pole been slightly weaker, Father Bok’s car would have been struck, and both drivers likely injured. Had it been strong enough to stop the out-of-control car, the driver of the SUV would have likely been seriously injured. As it was, nobody was seriously hurt.
Father Bok didn’t even know that the incident had happened until later in the day – when the police asked him about it and showed him the security video.
It seems that even Father Bok was too absorbed in his task at hand to notice the miracle that had just touched his life – and he’s in the business of noticing miracles. Ironically, his task at hand was to deliver a sermon for the Feast of Guardian Angels. I’ll bet the angels had a good laugh over that one.
Not all miracles are so obvious – but they’re miracles nonetheless.
Was the thwarting of a terrorist attack on a train to Paris, by 3 men with the right skills and disposition, being at precisely the right place and time merely happenstance – or something more? Was it mere good luck that the Kalashnikov rifle, one of the most reliable weapons in the world, jammed when the terrorist pulled the trigger?
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Was it a miracle that a virus revealed the evil being done to our children at school? Would parents have ever learned the gender confusion, racial hatred, and self-loathing being taught to our most vulnerable without the remote learning brought about by COVID? Was the convergence of circumstances necessary to reveal this outrage luck, or something else?
Countless times every day, a driver saves a life by hitting the brakes just in time, as a pedestrian steps into the street – the pedestrian too absorbed in their cell phone to notice the traffic. Are all of these cases luck, a testament to defensive driving courses, or the gentle hand of God ensuring that drivers look in the right direction at the right time?
How many such instances have to happen before we begin to suspect that there may be more than luck at play?
I’ve experienced many such miracles myself. Some I have noticed, and most I’m sure I haven’t. As a child spending the weekend with my grandmother, we were planning to go to the grocery store. Just before we walked out the door, a television program caught our attention and we decided to put off shopping for another day. Thirty minutes later the grocery was flattened by an F4 tornado from the 1965 Palm Sunday tornado cluster that struck the Midwest.
Was our absence at ground zero happenstance, or a miracle? Were we lucky, or did God gently save our lives with a television show? I stopped believing in happenstance years ago. For those that still don’t believe it could be a miracle, not a single person was killed in that grocery store – in spite of it being reduced to a pile of rubble. It seems nobody was meant to die at that particular location on that particular day.
The same tornado also leveled a house a block away. But it left a single closet standing in the middle of the concrete foundation – the closet that a woman had taken shelter in. I saw it, and I’ve believed that God is actively involved in our lives ever since.
This is the season to acknowledge the miracle of children – and I’m not referring to the miracle of birth. How many future lives will be saved and how much suffering will be relieved by the innocent souls that we say a prayer over each night as we tuck them in? Will one of them someday cure a disease, rescue a drowning child, or install a pole at just the right depth and location to save two lives? The possibilities for them to act in service to God are endless.
Let us not forget a single child born over 2 thousand years ago who changed the world forever. Whether you believe that child atoned for our sins or not (I do), he certainly made the world a kinder and more forgiving place – no small miracle for a single person.
On this holiest of holidays, regardless of one’s religious affiliation, it’s a good time to reflect on the presence of something greater than ourselves. We should all give thanks for the divine interventions that touch our lives every day. Those soft and often undetectable touches guide our lives just as surely as the stars have guided travelers for centuries – another gift from our creator.
Author Bio: John Green is a political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He has written for American Thinker, American Free News Network, and The Blue State Conservative. He can be followed on Facebook or reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
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