Miracles

Miracles are a big dad-gum deal, and it has always bothered me a little that Jesus didn’t heal everyone or right every wrong when he obviously had that kind of power. I guess I’m not that different than the first-century commoners who wanted him to come in power and make all things new. Right now. But Jesus carped at people for always wanting a miracle. “Unless you people see signs and wonders,” he said once, “you will never believe” (John 4:48).

But believe what?

We don’t want to die. We long for full, robust lives in bodies free of pain and disease, in a society free of discord and vice. We’re wired for heaven, but live on earth. So, because we’re made of dust we’ll all want a miracle sooner or later, and when we hear of someone who got one, we can feel a little jealous. I even wept last Sunday morning as a testimony of complete physical healing touched the deepest place of desire in me — hope is beautiful, but it hurts sometimes too. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, said Solomon, and I feel heartsick for those of us whose hope is on deferment.

So what was Jesus trying to say? What did he want us to believe even without signs and wonders? The gospel writer Mark tells us that where Jesus began healing, people began gathering and were waiting for him early one morning. But he couldn’t be found because, as was his habit, he disappeared to talk to his Father. That morning, after Jesus received his marching orders, he chose not to return to the village where he had healed and the line was waiting. “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come,” he told the disciples (Mark 1:38).

So, The Word came to preach. He colored outside the lines with stories about a Kingdom where the hairs on your head are numbered by the King because he cares so much about you. He taught about sin and forgiveness, and as the years clicked by, he said more and more about how he would die for all the sin of the world — the sin against the Father he loved — not his own debt, but ours. Against the common notions of the day, he was revealing a God who was concerned less with rules and more about heart. A God who loved first, reached first, and died first for us. A God who gave gifts even when all we gave him was trouble.

What if believing that was the really big deal, and the miracles were only billboards to draw us to that truth? Can we trust that God is good even if we don’t get our miracle? Can we refuse to compare ourselves to someone who did as if we are somehow less loved?

If you’re longing for some miracle, know that I’m with you, and while we wait, I hope we can trust that the God who holds eternity and numbers the hairs on our heads holds a plan for us too, because — even if unanswered longing makes our hearts ache — God’s deep, compassionate, pursuing, forgiving, forever love is the biggest miracle of all. We just can’t see that sometimes.

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.  (Jesus to Thomas, John 20:29)