By James Wilson
Tamara and Colin – not their real names – were born sixteen weeks premature. They weighed a pound and a half and are three pounds apiece as I write. At birth the doctors noted Colin was the weaker and advised the parents to let him die so all efforts could be spent on Tamara. The parents prayed and said, “Nothing doing.” Colin gained strength. Within two weeks the docs advised that Tamara be allowed to die as Colin was now the better candidate for life; parents remained prayerful and adamant. Others prayed from California to Australia’s Capitol Territory. Their dad anointed his children with oil and prayer; staff gave their blessing to the procedure. The twins have steadily advanced to breathing without assistance.
Both children were born with holes in their hearts requiring surgery – on little people with less than six pounds of weight between them. Prayer was escalated and the hole in Colin’s heart simply closed. Tamara’s hole has closed to the point surgery is no longer contemplated; praying friends and relatives are waiting for the completed miracle in Tamara. Yet the whole process has been one miracle after another, or one great progressive miracle if we like.
Albert Einstein – the world’s foremost physicist prior to Stephen Hawking –whose work made Hawking’s work possible – liked to say, “Either everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle.” Reality is everything is a miracle. And every miracle has its cause in the act of a loving God.
Among the most repeated miracles of everyday life are the beating of every human heart and the breathing of every human body. We learned in school these are involuntary muscular reactions. Really? I may not volunteer every expansion and contraction of my heart and lungs but neither am I a perpetual motion machine; somebody volunteers. That same Somebody says whenever people humble themselves, pray and seek His face, re-focusing attention on Him to Whom it has always belonged He hears, forgives, and heals. He goes by Abba, Yeshua Hamashiach, and Spirit of the Living God – Three in One – and He chooses to bring Tamara and Colin into life where He gets glory for Himself through visibility to the medical staff attending the babies. He is in the miracle business not for entertainment but for revelation purposes.
A miracle is not an aberration of nature but an intervention in nature by its Source and Monarch. C. S. Lewis said miracles are God writing in manifestations small enough for us to see what He normally writes so large we cannot see it for the smallness of our vision. He created the human body able to heal itself; a miracle of healing is His over-ride of the dysfunction in our bodies caused by our fallen state, and a fulfillment of His law of redemption and resurrection brought about by the Incarnation of His Son.
Some will say, “Oh yeah? Well what if they had been born before we had all this high tech medical stuff so they could be maintained while your God took His own sweet time healing those holes? And why let them be born so prematurely if He is so all powerful?” Reality is the twins were born for such a time as this – so were we all – just as the Biblical Book of Esther has a prophetic Mordecai proclaim to his niece as she prepares to speak redemption of her people to her husband the king.
There are no accidents, only occasions for His grace, and no coincidences, but only God-incidences; every person on the planet – now and always – was born for such a time as this. What are we to do about this reality that everything is a miracle?
We are to seek His face and vision. We are to use the brains God gave us to make and execute reasonable plans in the context of His vision rather than re-cooking plans we base on the limitations of what we can see unaided. The traditional translation of Proverbs 29:18 is, “Without a vision the people perish,” but a much more literal rendering is, “In order to live we must look God in the face.” He trumpets throughout His Bible that He provides nothing but abundant life for all of us. A steady look into His eyes, whether through His word or through a more contemporary but Biblically consistent revelation, is simply how we locate and access that life in particular context. This is as true for addressing drought, the economy, family or societal crises, or two babies born with seemingly no chance at life.
It is not only true; it is good news.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
