“We see miracles in our work all the time.”

I immediately made a note to chew on that one after hearing it from a colleague.

Did they really mean to use the word miracle? Or did they just mean change, transformation, growth? Doesn’t a miracle mean the impossible happened, something unexplainable, maybe even supernatural?

Those answers vary for many reasons: education, faith, philosophy, convictions, science. Traditions seem to dictate one’s definition. For those who prefer black and white, these provide what they need. I’m wondering if there’s more, more that would prompt someone to say they see miracles all the time.

In reading the New Testament, you cannot help but think of miracles as being something visible, something physically observable. Blind eyes healed. Leprosy cleansed. Dead raised.

Not having experienced it myself, I wonder what else happened to the blind man when he suddenly could see. Was the miracle only about his vision? How could this event not encompass all of his being-spiritual, emotional, mental? The healing miraculously altered all of him.

That thought suggests miracles can start in other areas for humans other than their bodies. Should we not consider unexplainable transformations to one’s spirit or mind also miraculous? Just because we cannot physically observe and identify the change does not disqualify it as miraculous.

An even broader conviction embedded in my colleague’s statement is that miracles are routine. Can this be taken too far? Sure. But it’s highly possible we created beings eventually lower our awe of routine miracles provided for us every day of our lives.

Are miracles confined to the extraordinary? Seems to me the rising sun contains miraculous elements. How often are they declared?

And maybe that’s the answer to the question. The answer isn’t found in a black and white definition. It’s found in genuine awe that every day contains happenings which I have no explanation for, things that I could not produce, things that touch the whole of how God created us.

Each one is a miracle. When I stop and consider them, the classification of the work lessens in importance to the one behind it.

It’s possible the answer to what is a miracle is that it’s the wrong question. What if we replace it with this one: What does a miracle say about its source?

Photo by Federico Respini on Unsplash