Miracles

Hyacinths that Husband brought home on Friday to grace our table I've been thinking about miracles, having just been mulling over the story of when Jesus turned water to wine in Cana. Miracles are something I'd love to have in my life; in fact, I know and pray about precisely which ones I'd like to see happen.

But I also suspect there are miracles constantly happening that you and I don't chalk up to the "miracle" column for whatever reason. The very fact that you awake each morning is a miracle. The fact that your cells all work together--billions of them--to create systems and an organism that does all you do, is a miracle. The fact that you and I were created by the God of the universe and that each hair and bone and joint is by His design, is a miracle. Hyacinths and hearts and honey are all miracles. Even if these things follow the laws and expectations of nature, it doesn't make them any less miraculous.

But consider other miracles, the kind in which the laws of nature seem to be turned sideways. While we take the previous miracles as ordinary because we seem to be able to count on them (for the most part), it struck me yesterday that Jesus takes the "miracle miracles"--like water changing into the juice of the grape--as ordinary. Simply all in a day's work. It's a logic and purpose that we just don't get, but it makes everyday sense to Him. When God steps into our world in a human body, that doesn't lower his expectations or limit the workings of his will.

So. When Jesus, knowing it would be the best-tasting wine ever, asked the servants to fill the jars with water and then take some to the emcee of the wedding supper, that surprised him about as much as me pouring out lemonade and it being...lemonade! When Jesus walked on the water, that amazed him about as much as it amazes me to walk across the lawn. When Jesus told the man by the pool of Bethesda to get up and walk...and the man did, that was about as unusual for Jesus as when I say to Husband, "Can you bring me a glass of water?" and he does.

All of which leaves me to wonder a lot of things about the purposes of God. But it also makes me wonder: why does "having faith" at times seem like such an effort to me? It's not that a life lived in God's presence is magical. It isn't. But the miracles and the ordinary get all mixed up in the kingdom of God, and I still have a long ways to go before I could ever figure it all out.