Waiting for a miracle

Miracles happen; they do. Deny this and you end up denying reality.

Stop for a moment and consider what you might discover given a chance to interview even a few million people on this planet. May I suggest that you will hear one story after another that is very difficult to deny.

Meanwhile, many people in the Western world have a very strong belief system that will not allow them to accept the possibility of God’s occasional, let alone constant, intervention in human affairs. This doesn’t happen because it can’t happen – according to their system. And that’s too bad, because what you believe can have a way of distorting your vision and even closing your eyes.

While I have a lot of respect for some aspects of higher eduction, going to university or college isn’t necessarily the route to take if you want to discover what is really going on in the world. Sitting in a classroom reading books and writing essays has its place, but it amounts to placing yourself in a controlled environment. For you soon become preoccupied with certain things and unable to attend to others.

Sadly, staying in such a state for too long, say, for the amount of time it takes to get a degree or two, is a great way to become disconnected from reality. There are other ways to lose your grip, but this is one method that will work just fine.

Miracles happen. But they don’t always happen.

Perhaps I speak from experience. For example, years ago I read a book called Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. The author’s main point is clear enough from the title. As an American academic writing primarily to wealthy Americans, Ron Sider addressed a relevant topic. But feeling self-righteous and indignant, I attempted to argue one of his side points about inappropriate land use one day (i.e. wasting a large number of acres raising cattle as opposed to growing crops). But a friend quickly pointed out the glaring flaw in my argument.

Farmers tend to raise cattle on land that simply isn’t suitable for growing crops. Doesn’t everybody know that? I guess I didn’t.

And although this illustration is a bit of an aside, the larger point remains: If you don’t believe in miracles, it may well be because you have spent far too much time living in an educational or cultural or media bubble of some sort and not near enough time out in the real world having a look around.

Miracles happen. But they don’t always happen. Consider two traumatic stories:

On December 14, 2012, one well-armed young man walked into a school filled with young kids in the USA and opened fire. In a matter of 10 minutes, Adam Lanza killed 20 students and 6 adults. On August 5, 2002, four men armed with AK-47 assault rifles arrived at a school in Pakistan and did the same. After the 15 minutes attack, 6 adults had died. This included: Abdul Rehman, Baber Pervaiz, Jave Masih, Manzoor Elahi, Mohd. Mukhtiar, and Mohd. Rafiq. A tragedy nonetheless.

The terrorists were not, however, trying to kill other Muslims or their own countrymen. The note left behind made it very clear that they were targeting Christian kids from the West. But no students at Muree Christian School died that day. Not a single one.

Look into the details, take the time, and you might be surprised at what you discover.

And yet, this isn’t to suggest that it always turns out well for Christian people. Life doesn’t work that way. Most every day, a church is attacked somewhere in the world and hundreds of people are oppressed, threatened, and even killed. Saeed Abedini was recently sentenced to 8 years in prison in Iran. But many other stories could be told. If you really want to feel depressed, look into what is going on in North Korea.

To be clear, this reflection about miracles is primarily intended for people who are already convinced they take place. But is it possible to be too convinced? Yes, in a way. For what starts out as an entirely appropriate and healthy conviction can drift towards a distorted and extreme position. There is a big difference between believing in an open system, that is, in a world where God is free to intervene, and presuming to know where and when and how this will happen.

Living in denial of the miraculous isn’t the answer. And neither is routinely waiting around for a miracle to take place.

Finding freedom

He had been running around. Running all over the place. Running on empty. Frantic. In a frenzy. Smartphone in hand. Looking urban and edgy. Tired. Weary. Lonely, if the truth must be told. But still running, and wondering why. It seemed like forever since he had even noticed the birds or the sky.

Forty-five “friends” on Facebook called for his attention today. Sixty-two emails magically appeared in his inbox. The phone kept on ringing all day. And walking home from the office, he was greeted by dozens of fourteen-second ads on a four-foot-wide flat screen TV. The carefully crafted images seemed more real and more appealing than his reality. For today was only Tuesday. The weekend was a long ways away. Felt like it would never come.

Settling into his favorite chair, his attention was quickly riveted on one thing after another that was apparently missing in his life. Then again, maybe something was?

No, he didn’t need another remote control device complete with twenty-five bewildering buttons. He had enough. More than enough of those. If only he could find the one he needed right now to change the channel. That would be nice. It must be somewhere in that pile of magazines and books and papers over there by the couch. Ah, there it was. It was parked on top the 250-page manual that was required reading to make it work. What a nightmare! It took one of his friends two weeks just to figure out how to turn his TV on. So much for living in a progressive modern world.

Another day…and another computer system somewhere goes down.

Technology. All of these gadgets were very nice. They worked well, when the worked. They were luxuries that many people living in less fortunate parts of the world would have longed for. What would the world be like without the Internet? Without cell phones and voice mail and television and cars and airplanes and skyscrapers, etc.? These innovations had added a lot. But, at the same time, sometimes it felt as if technology had taken over his life. In fact, right now he was struck with the realization that a combination of people and ideas and things had pretty much completely taken over his life.

For all the talk about a new level of cultural freedom he was feeling more controlled than he ever had been. More confined. He seemed to be drifting along for the most part. Doing and thinking and living as he was told. He could, for example, believe whatever he wanted as long as he chose to believe that. The extra activity he had inadvertently signed up for now appeared to be a necessary part of this philosophical package. It served to cloak the aching emptiness that turned up everywhere as a result. Slowing down. Taking the time to stop and think. That was the real danger now.

How could he ever hope to develop a clear sense of direction in his life if he was buying into this way of thinking and always incredibly busy?

Is this how he wanted to keep on living? Bouncing from one sound bite and one image and one experience and one complicated device and one demand and one belief system to another? The other day he noticed a fellow on the street with a slogan on his shirt. This is what it said: “THINK: It isn’t illegal yet.”

The view was beautiful from up here. Fifteen floors up, his condo had a commanding view of the skyline and the surrounding area. But who had the time to take it all in? The city lights, the river winding out into the bay, the ocean off in the distance, the ships coming in…it was too much to process in a moment or in a lifetime. Images were coming back from the rover on Mars now. There they were, in high-definition, on his TV. And how did they compare to the view from his balcony?

Turning around, and walking back inside, he came to one clear conclusion: This planet, this place, was made for living; and it was time to take action in a whole new way and finally begin to live his life.