Can I Make a Miracle Happen? Yes, I do it all the time.

             A miracle is both impossible and possible.  Both statements are “absolutely correct.”   If an event happens, it is obviously possible.  On the other hand, if it has not happened, it can only be hypothetical and has no bankable claim on possibility.  If it happens anyway, it is immediately demoted to “unlikely,” and I am free to attach some 
non-miraculous explanation to it.  How events appear depends on what I believe about it all. 

            But these are after the fact considerations.  The question is, can I make a miracle happen before the fact?  Of course not, or it wouldn’t be a miracle. Yet, if I kept a daily diary of my activities, it would have regular entries of miracles I have played a part in.  Never discount the miraculous.  In a moment of forgetfulness the apostle Peter walked on water.  Later Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.  Which event was a miracle? Before 1970, I thought  the two feats were equally impossible.  Correctly identifying miracles depends on ones angle of belief, and beliefs are our choice.

              As long as humans live, miracles will happen.  Miracles do not follow a playbook, they ad lib; they surprise the uninvolved unbeliever, but the believer, the recipient understands the perfect fit of the situation. If I step aside and look back I see the trail of miracles behind me, and once I get the feel of it I can make the miracles continue on, literally into outer space. Peter climbed back into the boat dripping wet, and it took him awhile to get “into the game.”  Do you think today’s space explorations are wasted effort?  Is there life on other planets?  What do you believe?

             Even if no one has seen a particular miracle until a certain moment in historical time, it always was, has been, and is continually possible, merely sitting in place awaiting a manifesting moment to jell.  Miracles are sui generis, generated from within.  The proof of a miracle’s cloak of “possibility” is in the seeing of it play out before your own eyes. Miracles only catch us by surprise when we aren’t paying attention. Disbelief stumbles around as voluntary and sustained illusion, interrupted occasionally by supernatural interventions.
 

           When these unexpected developments occur in the course of things, we weakly call them coincidences.  In this way we excuse ourselves for our limited vision.  But we don’t want this crippling pessimism to spoil the excitement of miracles for our children.  So we spin a marvelous story of the miraculous about Santa Claus and flying reindeer.   With our encouragement, Santa Claus becomes real to our children.  Within this magical image nestles such truths as reward for being nice, surprise delivery of presents in both timing and method, undiminished love (Santa’s inveterate jollyness), and so forth. To an adult, God replaces Santa--new belief but same miraculous elements (reward, surprise, happy love).  The reality of God is as valid as the reality behind the Santa story.  Subjective reality does not depend on objective manifestation, in whatever form it “appears.”  A person born again into spiritual adult belief no longer disbelieves in miracles she once was told are impossible. 

            Sometimes reality, though indelible, is written in invisible ink.   Belief is the tool for making the ink viewable and thereby convincing.  God is both impossible and possible.  Belief or unbelief in God reflects the angle we take on indelible spiritual reality.  Of course, we don’t create God by imagination.  But imaginative belief has the power to reveal God’s activity all around us. This constitutes proof, with belief as the certifier.  By inviting the image of God into our minds, not as a separate “person,” we transform our mundane world into an adventure in reality.  Everything we daily encounter falls into place, and at the end of the day we wonder why we didn’t see it coming.

            This is not the “name it and claim it” cheap kind of belief proclaimed by some TV evangelists.  But it is a self-actualizing process of reality discovery that we have control of and put to use every day, building upon our choices and experiences.  Miracles only await our readiness to embrace them. This kind of “believing” is what puts the seeing into our believing.  Waiting to believe what we see is a sign of powerlessness; it puts us on the sidelines.  Turning it around, seeing what we believe, puts us in the driver’s seat.  This is how we experience life anyway, intuitively.  We compose our own song, but the music is inside us.  The best way to say it is that we and God are co-composers.

            We will go where we are headed.  If you accept this, then we need to be responsible for what we believe and how we put our beliefs into practice.  For example, if we really believe all humans are born sinners (original sin), then it is no surprise that we naturally treat them as such.  It follows that all who don’t think (believe) as I do and aren’t “born again” are damned, wretched sinners.  And if I don’t treat them as they deserve, I am not following God’s lead.  If we reflect clumsily of God banishing Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, we may conclude we should not allow any homosexuals, Muslims, pot smokers, or any other bad sinners into our church, our block parties, or in any way allow them to enjoy any Garden privileges we “saved” ones have reclaimed.  Is this not the precise reason why lambs run scared, spears remain unmelted, and there is no peace in the world?  Our actions reflect our beliefs, and observing the troubles of our world—political, economic, environmental--I think we need to collectively change, or at least update, our beliefs.

             Just as the revolutionary announcements of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton changed our world, providing a miraculous toolbox for the industrial revolution and ultimately space travel, so quantum physics is revolutionizing our world as new beliefs are seen to be well grounded and feasible.  Similarly our classic Western Christian theology, composed from  biblical materials, is drawn on an old science canvas and needs re-viewed.  Jesus actually showed us how in his ”verily, verily I say unto you” sayings.  Jesus did not take the Old Testament literally in the small, legendary sense of literal.  He saw the bigger picture in the reality sense of literal.  A case in example: his definition of “adultery” was not legal-literal, rather it was mental-literal.  Jesus understood that our “thoughts” (beliefs) put wheels on our reality experiences.  A more happy example is the miracles he “assisted,” employing  the wheels of belief. 

             Some time after Christ’s death the Christian church met in council to settle some questions about who Jesus was.  Their pronouncements (at Nicea and Chalcedon) affirmed that God is a “person” in three modes (the Trinity), and that one of the God/persons, Jesus, was both human and divine.  This set the framework for how to view the God/Person of Old Testament legend but did not explain how the amalgam could work. It told us Christians what to believe about the miraculous, but not how to make sense of it.  Miracles just plain don’t make rational sense.

             If we accept Jesus’ life as a true “story,” his divinity and access to miracles depends for explanation on how we interpret the storied words.  Today we have the benefit of  Jesus’ radical corrections of “orthodox” views and the revelations of front-edge quantum science.  Demystifying the make-believe Santa does not kill the spirit of Christmas.  Galileo’s microscope did not prove the Bible wrong either.  With improved understanding, reality takes on an enhanced (truer) luster.  As spiritual adults experiencing our personal vision of reality, we can feel as comfortable as a child on Santa’s lap at the mall.  God is real and I can step into that world (God’s North Pole residence) and give it my personalized expression.  Believe it or not, I have the choice of beckoning miracles to happen.  Whatever I believe, is the reality I experience.  And what I don’t believe helps delineate my beliefs.  Our beliefs are fueled by our feelings, and feelings of abandonment and purposelessness are so close at hand.  So if we don’t want to be sapped by negativity, we should change our beliefs so that our feelings reflect the hope present in the nature of God.

             No events happen by chance.  To happen, any event must be called upon by name and detail.  It cannot pull itself together to turn into a miracle for it has no plan, no reason to happen.  Unhappened events have no ingredients,  no ears to hear a call. They have to happen to attain a name.  They don’t pull themselves together.  We walk in and say, “ o.k., let’s go.”  If what happens is miraculous, it is only so to those who didn’t walk in with you and are caught by surprise at the activity.  To you, the experiencer, what happens fits perfectly.  You and it fall right in stride.  You may feel the happening as serendipitous, but that is because it is so comfortable.  Miracles are totally impossible in unhappened, stagnant isolation.  Miracles are totally impossible ahead of time, but when we walk in with our believing choice in hand and ding the bell on the counter, a “supposed” miracle starts spinning without stripping any gears; that is why it is so “possible” despite its pre-happening impossibility.  It is like a freeway entrance ramp that becomes another lane on the freeway without disrupting traffic.  Unless I stay in bed all day, I make miracles happen sequentially all day, with God’s stunning assistance.

             What we see out there is the guideposts we follow.  As I look back at yesterday, what happened could never have occurred if I had not been there doing the things I believed would get me through the day.  Nothing big happened yesterday, but I can tell you about some whoppers that have happened in my living experience and are still affecting me. Miracles aren't wasted on us, they are part of our path.  This gives me confidence about my dreams for tomorrow as I step that way. Don’t think it was not a miracle that I had food to eat yesterday.  When it comes right down to it, miracles happen as we walk them into place.   Jesus was not so far off when he said we could move mountains; miracles are no flukes.  Miracles are not just divine interventions.  God and I work together setting the stage, and things unbelievable to the myopic actually happen, believe it or not.

                                                                                                                                                                                Doug Good