A Scarcity of Miracles

‘Night falls
As darkness reappears
The madness and the fears close behind now
Faith calls me to question who I am
With neither myth nor man stand beside them....

...the scarcity of miracles we'd found’

                                From ‘A Scarcity of Miracles’ by Jackszyk, Fripp and Collins (a ‘King Crimson Projekct’)

 A true miracle is – by definition – an action or intervention of God which cannot be explained by the normally observed laws of nature. I am not going to attempt to get into a discussion on whether or not miracles do or ever have occurred beyond noting that I am a believer in both the possibility and the occurrence of such events. That said, I think that there are many far from reliable – even extremely dubious – claims of ‘miracles’ and I think that true miracles are much rarer occurrences than some suppose or claim.

But, as a Christian it seems to me that one cannot affirm (as I do) that God has taken on human flesh in Jesus, who rose again from the dead and so forth, without affirming the possibility of the miraculous. I could go on....

However, it is not my intention to begin a discussion on the nature or possibility of miraculous occurrences.

But nor am I simply thinking about ‘miracles’ in terms of the common colloquial usage when the word is often used to describe a beneficial event that is statistically unlikely but not actually contrary to the laws of nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or a welcome coincidence or simply a ‘wonderful’ occurrence, regardless of likelihood, such as a birth etc.

I am (knowingly and intentionally) using the term ‘miracle’ loosely but not unthinkingly, and in that ‘loose’ use of the term I am about to contradict something I said in one of my posts a few days ago. Reflecting upon the difficult times we have faced in recent months I wrote ‘I have longed for miracles, but experienced none’.

I suppose what I meant was that there had been precious little sign of God at work in a way that would actually change or relieve our situation. It was not a complaint that there had been no divine intervention contravening the laws of nature, but rather that there had been no clear indication of an answer to prayer or a ‘coincidence’ of events that might indicate a divine response.

A ‘Scarcity of Miracles’, in other words.

But I was not being quite accurate.

While I cannot go into detail, there has been an astounding (almost unbelievable... perhaps – yes – ‘miraculous’) coincidence of circumstances that has given us incredible hope and has provided for us a way out of the worst of our situation. While I can’t tell the full story, it has shone such light into our darkness that it has had an utterly transformative effect. And it all came about due to an almost impossible ‘coincidence’ of events.

Now, as I have already said, strictly speaking a coincidence does not a miracle make! But in our context and given our prayers and taking into account the utterly incredible nature of the ‘coincidence’, its complete transformation of our circumstances and its dramatic effect upon us, I will settle for thanking God for this ‘miracle’.

Archbishop William Temple[1] once replied to his critics who regarded answered prayer as no more than coincidence, ‘When I pray, coincidences happen; when I don’t, they don’t.’

Quite.

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[1] This quote has also been attributed to others. But the point is not who said it (or even who first said it)!