Water to Wine and Some Thoughts on Miracles

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"The conscious water saw its Master and blushed."  Alexander Pope

 
A friend recently asked me about miracles. He asked if as a Christian, “do I find myself trying to logically dissect and/or comprehend miracles? “Well of course my answer was, “no…. I understand everything God does, and every facet of the supernatural workings of miracles…….” OK, enough frivolity :-). The truth is, while on this side of glorification, finding oneself intelligibly questioning the metaphysical realities of the Christian faith is commonplace, what’s more, it is even healthy. Why? It signals the active engaging of the head with the heart. This is not to say that those who find miracles less intellectually provoking and accept without question, are without thought; or equally that those with more questions are diminished or diminishing in wonder concerning God and the miraculous. Quite simply, it speaks to our individual uniqueness as Christians: some of us are questioners; some of us are not. But even those who have found some level of contentment, that contentment was found on the other side of a question asked. They have either gotten a sufficient answer or they are sated with the presence of God, in the midst of His silence concerning a question.
Why, who, where, what…..
I can find myself on either side, depending on the day and the miracle in question. What I retreat from is doubt! Doubt in this respect, is a question that has forgotten all the other questions that have been answered before it. Furthermore in the case of miracles, though we’re tempted, it’s not the "how" that should be in question, for there’s no divine equation for miracles given in scripture, the "how" is what I call a "Deuteronomy 29:29 question." The "why, who, where, what and that", are all present, enough to sustain within us wonder and awe for an eternity, and should drown out the noise caused by the "how", if we allow it. I've found it helpful to marry my perplexity with my awe. In other words, it’s to say "I don't get how he does this, but it makes Him (God) even bigger to me."

Conversion

Our hearts and its infatuation for the “grandiose miracle” notwithstanding, it is the spiritual life to death conversion of a sinner, where we see God is doing his more personal day to day miracle act. The miracle of conversion is what we should desire to see more of, but we often take for granted, sometimes not crediting it as a miracle at all or as miraculous, as say, the lame-walking. In proper perspective a healed physical ailment is tremendous and should be praise to the glory of God, but it is temporal and falls short in comparison to a resurrected spirit which is eternal.

Who’s the Master?

Lastly, sometimes it is a sublime yet simple poetic sentence that can, in part, sum up a miracle. Though our vocabulary will never fully do justice to what a miracle encompasses, Alexander Pope came so beautifully close. For isn’t it what all miracles are essentially, more than the supernatural realm breaching the natural realm, isn’t it the - weather (winds, waves), whales (big fish), water, lions, fire, day and night, food, us, the universe, molecules and atoms, cells etc. obeying the commands of its master?

 

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