We’ve all
been in situations where we’re not really sure about something someone has told
us, but we have no reason to doubt them, so we take them at their word. When
Jesus went to Galilee the Galileans were more interested in miraculous signs
and wonders than they were in believing in Him. At that time a certain royal
official, whose son was near death in the town of Capernaum about 20 miles away,
begged Jesus to come and heal him. Jesus replied, “You may go. Your son
will live.” The man took Jesus at his word and departed” (John 4:50 NIV). Today
many of us are like the Galileans…rather than taking Jesus at his word, were looking
for miraculous signs and wonders.
1 comment:
Gail;
-----To what could we compare this present world? Maybe a woodstove with its damper closed tight. Instead of a nice airflow through it causing clean, warm burning, little air flows into a smoke choked chamber. We could compare it to a beautiful mountain meadow overrun by groundhogs. Everywhere you step there is either a hole or a tunnel collapses under your weight, or you got poop on your shoe again. Or we could simply compare it to a nice comfortable, car halfway between Delta and Grand Junction on the shoulder of the road with no gas at 2AM, early January, ten below zero. Yah. That one’s it!
-----But God did not create this world to operate with its damper closed tight. He did not make it to exist with its substance eaten down to sponge-like consistency with poop all over the place. He made it to move around happily with lots of gasoline. For a moment in history its damper was open; its ground was solid and clean; it had a tank-full of gasoline! Then Eve exchanged its higher law of thermodynamics for a bite of an apple, settling for life in the second law of thermodynamics -the law of “wear out like a garment,” (Ps 102:26,) the one that is the whole creation’s bondage to decay (Rom 8:21.)
-----By now we are all used to the smoke, the holes and poop, and the cold. They're the new normal. Scientific principles, we consider them, unbreakable barriers of existence beyond which there might be this Almighty God capable of anything except breaching those barriers. This makes Him not so almighty.
-----I must admit, I long to see miracles. Not because I need it to know God is indeed Almighty. I knew that before I started seeing miracles. And I believe knowing that then is why I see miracles now. Miracles are the puff of fresh air blown through the stove, which for an instant is the stove’s operating properly. They are solid ground for planting feet cleanly. They are the car running on fumes. They are a momentary piece of right in a corrupted existence -the sparkles of God’s fingertip touching a situation.
-----I see a miracle every day all day. The ground and everything above, around, and in it are miracles. God called them forth from nothing. What? Did we need to be there seeing its calling forth for it to be a miracle? Not really. Seeing the effect of it is seeing it. Yesterday, Char called shortly before I was set to leave the office. She wanted me to go by our daughter’s home, then pick up a loaf of bread from City Market. Both would add considerable time to my already time consumptive need to drop by Ace Hardware. Leaving immediately became important. Then, my step-mom called. She wanted to talk Trump/Cruz. I could sense her want was a need. Oh, sigh. It was right to add this twenty minutes to the length of my bloated homeward schedule. But as I hung up and headed for the door, Char calls back. Erin’s just shown up at our house. The police have her apartment complex cordoned off. How long would I have sat fretting outside that complex had LaVelle not needed twenty minutes? Atheists call this sort of thing coincidence. Christians who mentally submit to the “unbreakable barrier” call it synchronicity. Although it was a very minor one, I call it a miracle, like I call the ground I walk on and the air I breath.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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