On Miracles, and Being One

If you read the Good Book, either the Old part or the New, you find
that God is a miracle worker. His quick, thunderous acts of
supernatural creativity are sprinkled in amongst the pages. Seas are
parted, cities fall, pillars of fire swirl down from the sky.

Christians, for the most part, have internalized this aspect of their
deity. It's an excitement and a comfort to know that in case of
trouble God can stick his hand into the atmosphere and caress or
rebuke reality into submission. It's a pleasant fiery sigh of
admiration and security.

But his greatest accomplishment is not a sea parting or Lazarus being
raised to die again. His most powerful and enduring work is on such a
scale that many fail to notice it. History is God's canvas, men and
nations are his brushstrokes. He uses the colors of power and
weakness, joy and grief, triumph and regret.

This is not as comfortable as a simple miracle because it strips a man
of his self-importance. And neither is it exciting to a generation
bred on up-to-the-minute news and blockbuster movies that cover years
of history in a shining, thumping three hours.

So when troubles crash into Christian lives they kneel and pray for a
miracle – a strong wind and a fierce flame and a flood of God's loving
power to cleanse their lives of such anxiety, or the lives of those
they pray for. But in these frenetic days we forget that God has been
at work subtly for centuries that we have not seen. He has been
sculpting that greatest work.

Looking at the history of the last three hundred or so years, America
is the most remarkable development. From the beginnings of some brave
and perhaps foolish separatists has grown the richest nation ever to
occupy the earth. And it should not escape you that a majority of
Americans would claim Jesus as their primary religious figure. Let me
synthesize – the richest nation in the world is primarily a Christian
nation.

This nation does not hesitate to drop to its collective knees and pray
for miracles when confronted with things like poverty and AIDS and
Africa. They pray for God's quick, supernatural solution, apart from
anything that they as individuals can (or ought to) do.

They don't realize, as they pray for God's intervention, that they are
the miracle. Enough wealth has been placed into the hands of
Christians that they can heal the world. They can buy the medicines
and the food and the concrete floors and tin roofs to change the lives
of all the billions that need it, to change the world.

So, by all means, implore God for miracles. Pray that He will
intervene extraordinarily for those who need it. But as you are
asking for miracles, remember that for millions of people you are the
miracle. You are a part of God's grandest work, a story centuries in
the making coming to a bursting but contingent crescendo. You have
been given the chance – you must be the miracle that you ought to be.

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