By: Carolyn Gard
Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and made the sea dry land. Exodus 14:21
The dictionary defines a miracle as: “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.”
The Bible is full of miracles: the parting of the Red Sea, Joshua telling the sun to stand still, David killing Goliath, the loaves and the fishes.
People got a little skeptical of miracles and decided to find scientific causes for them. There is a wind that blows across one end of the Red Sea flattening the reeds and allowing people to walk across. Joshua ordering the sun to stand still was a solar eclipse. Goliath suffered from a form of gigantism and was burdened with over 100 pounds of armor, so when he fell, he couldn’t get up before David slew him. The loaves and fishes was simply a case of people sharing their food.
Sadly, after these explanations, miracles seemed to go away. But the dictionary has a second definition of miracle: ‘an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment.”
On Christmas Eve, 1914, German and British soldiers left their trenches and sang Christmas carols and exchanged gifts. On August 28, 1963, in Washington, D.C., 250,000 people heard Martin Luther King Jr. say, “I have a dream.” On August 21, 2017, thousands of people drove hundreds of miles, camped out on roadsides and in fields, put on funny glasses, and said ‘Aaaaah’ as the sun stood still. On the fourth Sunday of every month we share our ‘loaves and fishes’ (and peanut butter sandwiches) with our hungry neighbors.
Maybe there still are miracles. Maybe we just need to change our definition of miracle.
Oh, yes, and someone needs to figure out how that water to wine thing works.
Lord, let us be your means of creating miracles on earth.
