What exactly is a miracle?
If you’re a Bible believing Christian, that’s probably not a question
you’ve asked. If you’re a skeptic,
you’ve probably wouldn’t even waste much time pondering that question and
dismiss it with a remark about ignorant people.
Yet miracles are part of the universal human experience. There is no culture on Earth that doesn’t
believe in miracles of some kind.
Tim Stafford is a senior writer for Christianity Today and
has spent twenty-something years traveling the world and hearing accounts of
miracles, which are the topic of his new book aptly titled: Miracles.
He admits that as a reformed Presbyterian, he didn’t have
much faith in miracles and mostly leaned toward the position that God had
gotten out of using people in His miracle working business after He finished
his epic memoirs aka the Bible. (My words not his.)
But when a young man that he knew from his Presbyterian
church, who had been bound to a wheelchair, went to a healing service at a more
charismatic church and walked away from it pushing his wheelchair in front of
him, Mr. Stafford decided to start digging a little deeper.
He found two things: there’s a lot of hyped-up, exaggerated
miracles that people just want to believe but probably aren’t even close to
true, but there are also real documented miracles happening all over the
world. He gives one example of watching Muslims
come to Christ in Mozambique because a deaf man is healed in His name.
What is the thing that separates the real from the
hype? Well, the real are much rarer,
usually important to an individual and those who know him/her, they’re
life-changing for everyone involved, and most importantly God uses these
“signs” as just that--signs that point to Him.
I have to say that I loved this book.
I’ve seen miracles first hand. When my son was born, my wife went blind from
complications because her blood started to clot and hemorrhage and damaged the
tissue in her eyes, as well as other organs throughout her body. It wasn’t certain whether she would live or
die, but according to the doctors and the counselors that visited during that time,
if she made it, her sight would be impaired for life.
I remember making videos of our son for her with the dim
hope that God would heal her someday, and I wanted her to be able to see her
son’s face when he was born. I also remember writing about healing during this
time in the post Healing
and God’s Heart.
People all around the world were praying for her recovery,
and our boy was a month and half old when his mom was stable enough to come
home from the hospital. I can’t point to
a specific moment when she got her sight back, but the next time we went to the
doctor, she had 20/20 vision.
This is one of those examples Stafford would point to as
hard to verify. The medical records show
that she was blind and got her sight back, but they chalk it up to the body
healing itself. They can’t explain how
it healed itself, but it did. It happens
all the time. Of course, that’s a
skeptic’s response. I don’t know how it
happened, but it wasn’t a miracle because miracles don’t happen.
On the other hand, I’ve heard lots of people in the more
charismatic side of things claim healing, but then a week later, they’re
suffering again. Were they healed or
not? I’d say, no, and I think Stafford would too.
However, I think his summation is a good one. If someone tells you they’ve been healed,
hope that they have been and praise God.
Rejoice with those who rejoice.
If someone needs healing, pray that they will be, and mourn with those
who mourn. But don’t get so focused on
signs and wonders that you forget whom the signs point to.
No comments:
Post a Comment