And so is everything else
Most of my life I’ve longed to see a miracle.
I grew up on a daily dose of them through Bible stories. The Parting of the Red Sea. Jonah and the Whale. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the Fiery Furnace. Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Lazarus Raised from the Dead. Water Turned Into Wine. Jesus Walking on Water. The Feeding of the Five Thousand.
These wondrous tales made me tingle all over and I hoped that one day I’d see a miracle occur right in front of me. However, I never did and as time went on I came to believe that the Age of Miracles had passed.
But now that I am old, I realise that every moment is packed with miracles.
Miracles Are Everywhere
The word miracle comes from the Latin miraculum, which means an object of wonder. So, a miracle is an amazing occurrence, worthy of wonder.
Using this definition, things that we take for granted every day are miracles, because most things, when we really take notice, are amazing and wonderful.
It’s amazing that you and I can walk.
It’s wonderful that animals give birth, and a baby bird emerges from an egg.
It’s incredible how the world spins, creating winds and seasons and day and night.
Language is amazing. Dancing is wonderful. Sleeping and waking are incredible events.
Seeing, tasting, touching, feeling and smelling are daily miracles.
Our thought processes, beating hearts and automatic breathing are nothing short of miraculous.
Holding a book in my hand is a result of a series of miracles involving sunlight, water, time, machinery, vehicles, human labour, and human thought. Which one of these things isn’t a miracle?
Even a discarded food wrapper tossed by the wind into a gutter is a miracle because existence itself is a miracle. How wondrous and amazing it is that the molecules in the wrapper hold together, and that my eye can perceive its presence in the gutter.
In her book, The Luminous Web: Faith, Science and the Experience of Wonder, Barbara Brown Taylor quoted Einstein:
The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.
I’ve stopped looking for miracles performed outside of the laws of nature. Instead, I surprise myself every day by observing miracles in everyday life.
We don’t need a miracle.
We are a miracle.
With love, Marlane
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