Quiet Miracles

It happened so quietly I didn't even realize it at first. Only after about a month of sleeping soundly through every night, did it strike me that a miracle had occurred in my life. I used to pray ever so diligently for God to heal my long-running sinus problem, since no doctors or medication could cure it. Over the years it had gotten worse than mere bouts of sneezing in the mornings.  It was a terrible nuisance when it acted up. Sometimes my nose got so stuffed I could only breathe through my mouth. Sometimes it got so 'runny'  I was literally 'dripping' phlegm all over my face. So I always kept a roll of tissue by my bedside. Needless to say it totally disrupted my sleep. The strange thing was every night, it would 'act up' at precisely the same time at the unearthly hour of 4 am - I would wake with a stinging pain in the nose that at times went right up to the head. It grew to be so familiar to me that after awhile I just gave up praying. When I got tired of waking up at 4 am, I would visit the specialist who would, as usual, prescribe the usual medication. He just couldn't find anything wrong despite poking all sorts of instruments up my nose. So he simply called it a 'sensitive' nose.  I had resigned myself to living with this 'inconvenient thorn in the flesh' for the rest of my life.

But the miracle did happen.  I don't know how, and I don't know when exactly. All I know is 'it' stopped. For the first time in years, I am not awakened at 4 am. I breathe normally. The roll of tissue by my bed remains untouched. There is no pain, no phlegm, no sneezing, nothing. It is as if I never had any nose problem. I tried to figure it out, maybe something changed in the atmosphere. Nope, in fact the rainy season is the time it normally gets worse. And nope, the most likely 'culprit' that makes my nose react (according to the doctor) - my cat - hasn't stopped rolling around on my bed. So nothing has changed in my environment. Yet I am healed, inexplicably, wondrously healed, even after I gave up asking for a miracle. God didn't forget, and God didn't give up on me, faithless as I am. What else is there to say, except Thank You, Lord.

Indeed some miracles happen so quietly we don't even notice it...like the physical healing of my nose. But as marvelous as that is, nothing compares to the miracle of a transformed life, which God showed me one Saturday down at the street alley. There were not many 'customers' to feed that day. I caught sight of a 'street-friend' who had been long absent from the scene. I first knew this man years ago, when he was in bad shape, physically ill because of a long history of drug addiction and stomach problems. Gaunt, unkempt, unshaven. Hopeless and helpless. Yet he wasn't that far gone that God couldn't reach. Whenever he dropped by, I would sit with him, tell him about my Jesus and pray for him. He was illiterate, didn't understand much. But somehow one day, quietly he muttered the prayer of faith. After that he disappeared for a long time.

Remembering how he was back then, and looking at him now,  I couldn't believe my eyes, for before me was a totally changed man. He had put on weight, his clothes were clean, he had on proper shoes. His hair was neatly combed, his moustache trimmed. But most of all, there was life, glorious life, in him. Shyly he told of how he now had a roof over his head, was living with relatives and taking care of their 6 children. I asked him if he remembered the Jesus he had called upon years ago, when he was down and totally out. He simply looked up to heaven, smiled and said thank God. He and I know he couldn't have made it on his own; his new life came from a God who specializes in miracles. He reminded me of the Bible story of the naked demon-possessed man who lived in the village cemetery. The people found him, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind, completely delivered.

The dictionary defines a miracle as a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency. How politically correct. Might as well just say it's God, at least that's how people who believe in God understand it. Any Christian worth his salt knows all about miracles, the entire Bible is filled with miracles. The Christian faith stakes itself on what surely qualifies as the most spectacular miracle of all - a dead man resurrected from the grave. So we have come to expect miracles as something that must be 'showy', grand, fantastic and super-super-lative. Which is precisely the point of a miracle. So much so people have come to expect that's how miracles must work every time.

I have been to enough healing rallies to witness for myself blind eyes and deaf ears opened, the lame rise up and walk, the oppressed delivered. Though I have never seen any dead being resurrected, but that's due to the fact that no one has ever brought a dead body to the healing rallies I  attended. Still there are plenty of videos on U-tube of people certified dead returning to life. Certainly I believe my God works mighty miracles; after all He is called  the Almighty One. Certainly miracles can be and often are manifested in awesome 'big bang' displays of power that I can only attribute to God.

But that does a terrible disservice to the omnipotence of a God whom I have come to know and appreciate as infinitely the Master-Creator whose Hands painted the entire universe in all its magnificent physical beauty, who designed the intricacies of human beings in individual uniqueness. For it is not true that miracles must always come accompanied by thunder-bolts from heaven.  As the prophet Elijah discovered, contrary to his expectations, God didn't show up in a great, strong wind, an earthquake or even fire. Instead He came as a still, small voice.

Perhaps that's why we can walk through life missing many quiet miracles, taking things and God for granted. We explain away the amazing wonders of life with smart scientific theories. Actually, for those don't want to believe, nothing will convince them to believe anyway, not even a dead man come alive. But for those who will believe, there are always miracles to rejoice over that make life so much more exciting and God so real.

And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.- Revelation 21:5