What is a Miracle?

What is a miracle? An event or transition or outcome that we would like but don’t believe will happen and then—voila! It does and we consider it a miracle. I see it all as reality. Reality bigger than we can conceive.

Cancer disappears. Lost dogs come home from hundreds of miles away. A man escapes the inferno of the World Trade Center running down 80 flights of stairs. Years before that in 1989, the same man is in a car on the San Francisco Bay Bridge as a 6.9 earthquake shakes and rumbles, cracking the asphalt. A chasm opens up and this man in his car is dangling over the edge. Dangling. Panicked—yet he escapes that, too. In an interview, this survivor of two improbable disasters, says he believes in miracles but is angry that God has not told him why he has been saved twice. “There must be some purpose in me still being here,” he says in frustration, “but what is it? Why me? When will I know why I have been saved?”

Perhaps it is not a miracle or destiny—but just the way it is. Some people win the lottery twice. Some people who are infertile conceive twins at an age when the body is not supposed to be fertile—without the aid of drugs.

My miracle is my mom, my son, my partner, my life. But it is not a miracle – it is the way it is. And imperfection even exists in the perfection. Hard to grasp, but still the way it is. Life is like gambling. Sometimes you roll snake eyes, sometimes you gotta mortgage your house. Just keep rolling those dice. Just keep dancing. Just keep writing. Just keep telling the truth. God is not a smiling god and does not favor one over another. Just keep loving and laughing. Be generous and forgiving.

Live your full-hearted life. THAT is the miracle!

Note: Perhaps as an exercise in reflection jot down a few of your miracles….. a rare moment to savor…