Do you believe in miracles? I do. Yes, I believe that God still works miracles, big ones and little ones. The bigger ones may not be very common, but we don’t know everything that happens in the world, and people do keep things to themselves. Even so, there may be more to the absence of big miracles, and we’ll come back to that. I want to take some time to talk about the little ones.
What do I mean by little ones? You might think children. They are miracles (by the way, you used to be a child too, if you aren’t now, and that makes you a miracle), but I’m talking about the insignificant moments that happen and we think, “Wow! That was kind of cool.” No, not the time someone paid for your coffee, but rather the things that have no real explanation except that it was a little gift from God. Let me give you some examples from my own life.
When I was a kid, my dad left for work after dinner and came home before breakfast. There was one night my mom awoke us kids, got us dressed quickly, and in the car. My dad’s nose was bleeding profusely at work, and we needed to get him to a hospital. My dad has had chronic nosebleed problems for as long as I can remember, so he knows how to care for his nose. The fact he was asking for help in the middle of the night meant bad enough nothing he did made it stop.
I remember being so sleepy, but I could tell my mom was concerned, and that kept me awake. She was driving and fervently praying at the same time. I don’t remember what she said, but I do know that as she ended her supplications as she always does—in Jesus’ name, amen—the phone began to ring. My mom answered and it was my dad saying the nosebleed had suddenly stopped. We went back home and back to bed. All was well.
I don’t think I could ever forget that moment. It was a little miracle in a big way. Some might consider it a coincidence. I believe otherwise, but that’s not the only time I experienced a little miracle. Another that comes to mind is the time we prayed as a family for the life of a baby chicken. My mom was excited to get chickens and have home-grown eggs. She got approval from the city council, and my dad and I built the coop that housed them.
We got six chickens in total, and one of the two Black Stars stopped drinking water and became lethargic. We had no idea why, but we did know if she didn’t start drinking soon, she would die. My mom said we needed to pray over her. We all gathered around and placed our hands over this little chick, who was so small she fit comfortably in one palm. We prayed together—again, I don’t remember the prayer, I just remember we were all in agreement.
It’s common for chicks to die, and professionals recommend buying a backup chick for this reason. My mom did so, but that didn’t stop her from trying to save this one anyway. Very quickly, that little chick perked up and acted normal. You know what’s even better? She turned out to be the nicest chicken I knew (I have plenty of terrible experiences with chickens), and she outlived all the other chickens we had. She adopted many of the kittens that wandered into our backyard, and they all respected her until the end.
Another little miracle I want to talk about is probably the smallest one, though it is the most recent and the inspiration for this post. I recently sent handwritten letters to a few friends, because handwritten letters are nice, and I want to use my stationery. I had picked five people to write to, and I planned to use two pieces of paper from my stationery for each. I packed them into my backpack the day before going to the library where I wrote them.
Here’s where the details get interesting. I wrote to Person One using two papers. Person Two had two papers. Person Three, one paper. I surprised myself with that fact, but, that’s how it went. Person Four, two papers. Person five, four papers. Now, if you’re keeping track, you will notice that’s eleven pieces of paper, not ten. No, I did not take paper from the library; I had accidentally grabbed an eleventh paper from my stationery the night before. But wait, there’s more!
As I wrote to Person Five, I felt the need to give them some very specific encouragement. I’d only intended to say hi and let them know to expect more letters from me, but I just had important thoughts about something coming up in their life I felt led to encourage them about, and it took all four papers—the original two, the one left over from person Three, and the extra one I grabbed by “accident”.
I can’t explain this except as a miracle. Now, before you say that I subconsciously felt safe to write a letter that long because I knew I had the paper to do so, I will say I wanted to stop writing; my hand was hurting. Writing four letters by hand is hard when you’re not used to it! I pushed through the hand cramps anyway. I had to write this letter.
Each of these events may be simple coincidences, but these are only three moments from my 27 years on this earth. I can’t tell you how many times someone lost something, looked for it several minutes to an hour in every place possible and impossible more than once, prayed that God would send His angels to bring it back, and then immediately find it—either in the open, in a pocket thoroughly emptied three times before, or in the floorboard of the car already scouted inside and out. These are the tiniest of the little miracles, yet they are the most complex. It’s hard to believe those are simple coincidences.
Is God really working in these instances? Are little miracles the only way He works now? People have said God doesn’t operate like He did in Bible times. In some ways that’s true—as evidenced by his forgiveness through the cross—but that event did not end miracles. The book of Acts chronicles real-world events following Jesus’ resurrection, and it’s filled with miracles, both big and small. Just like today, people didn’t always believe what they saw and heard.
The people in the Bible didn’t have the Bible to tell them about God’s work behind the scenes like we do now. Think about the Old Testament. People laughed when Noah built the ark. Do you think when the rain came they knew a miracle was happening? God had communicated with the one person who would listen to him and saved him from death—and that’s miraculous.
Think about Abraham and Isaac. Do you think people knew about what happened on the mountain at Moriah, how God provided Abraham a sacrifice in place of Isaac? If they did know, some would have attributed it to a coincidence, a convenience, or their own gods. What about later when Balaam’s Donkey spoke to him—how many people knew about that? As these stories were written down and passed on, becoming what we know as the Hebrew and later Christian Bible, they provided people with God’s perspective of past events no one had known before.
People in the New Testament were aware of Old Testament stories, but they were unaware of the work God was doing in their time, as evidenced in the aforementioned book of Acts. Today, we have a Bible filled with explanations of God’s work that were only known to a few. It’s possible God is putting together another testament chronicling the time between Jesus’ death and His second coming, but we may never know about it in our lifetime. Even if He isn’t adding to the Bible, He still performs miracles today.
Did you know about the events in my life I just told you before today? Do you think God had a hand in them?
Don’t get me wrong, these are instances where God answered prayer, and times when He just did something that didn’t actually have prayer before it, like with the letters. I am painfully aware that there are times God does not answer prayers the way we want. I have a previous post all about that. Do I know why those things happened and are happening? No. I probably won’t know this side of Heaven. But we do know about God’s past work this side of the Bible.
God still does miraculous things. Sometimes people talk about it, and other times they’re not allowed to. If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to watch the movie or read the book titled “The Insanity of God.” It was created by missionaries who shared what God’s been doing in countries where Christianity is illegal. I also highly recommend the book “I Found God in Soviet Russia” by John Noble. For a story closer to home, check out Christy Wilson Beam whose big miracle became a book and movie titled “Miracles from Heaven.”
There are miracles all around us. God is always working. If you still don’t believe it, that’s a choice you’ve made, and I can’t say any more to convince you. But if you ever change your mind, I would say that’s a miracle of God changing your heart.
-Beth
Beth Freemont 