Have you ever had someone walk into your life at just the right moment? Have you ever had a friend call, just when you needed some support and encouragement? Have you ever had an experience in your life that was so disastrous, so tragic, that you thought it would take a miracle to repair it? Have you ever experienced a blessing so grand, so beautiful, so wonderful that you thought it was a miracle that it happened at all?I am reminded of an extremely terrifying time almost ten years ago, when my youngest daughter, Hayley, was involved in an accident where she was thrown from the car as it rolled off our steep driveway and plunged over an embankment. There were several miracles here; the biggest one was that the car didn't crush her and that she survived at all! The next twenty-four hours though were filled with miracles of human intervention; our pastor who showed up in the emergency room after being up all night with a police patrol, Hayley's drama teacher, who just happened to be working her shift in the emergency room at Scottish Rite hospital and who not only comforted and reassured us of the outcome, but who prayed with me and calmed my nerves, the surgeon who immediately knew what to do, took Hayley right into surgery and with his skilled hands, had her moving a leg that she couldn't lift an hour before.
I doubt there are many of us who have lived such bland, such uneventful lives that we can't relate to times in our lives when we experienced miraculous interventions of some kind. However, often in the midst of our daily lives, they are difficult to see. We often become so lost in the urgent details of our lives, that we overlook the important. It takes a peak experience or a tragic experience for us to recognize the miracles around us all the time. There are miracles of birth and rebirth, miracles of love and forgiveness, miracles of courage and generosity.
Most of the time we tend to think of miracles as something external that happens to us; something that is created by or through someone else which we rather passively enjoy and experience. Here's a different way to think about miracles though... what if the miracle is you? What if you have the capacity to be the miracle in someone else's life? What if someone is just waiting for you to speak, to act, to bless them in some way with something that only you can do or share? What if rather than trying to recognize the miracles around you, you were actively being a miracle for others?
Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.
--Phillips Brooks, U.S. Episcopal bishop
