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A few days ago, I embarked on a new summer project: gardening. I went to various places collecting what I needed and the next day I assembled my crops; my landlord put the kibosh on me bringing a cow home and so I had to settle for Miracle Grow as my fertilizer. About an hour after planting my crops I went to check on them: nothing! I lamented on Facebook:
I planted my Cherry Tomato plant and Lavender flower seeds over an hour ago! Where are my crops?!
My comment was for pure comical purposes as I know that growing plants takes time, work and patients; and the following Sunday at church I caused a friend to chuckle when I told her about my new project and (again for comical purposes only) lamented that I used Miracle Grow fertilizer: "It says "Miracle Grow", not "Natural grow". Naturally growing crops takes time, but I used Miracle Grow! It's been over an hour, where's my miracle!"I lamented.
The idea of miracles is controversial as it flies in the face of the observable facts of reality. It would truly have been a miracle if my tomato plant grew to full size and flowered me some little juicy Cherry tomatoes within an hour of being planted and watered; and to date, I have never heard of such an event happening. However does a lack of personal witnesses for such growth mean that such an event can't happen? It is of course not within the realm of normality but is it within the realm of possibility? Yes, if you have a miracle worker in play.
In todays skeptic society many Christians are under pressure to believe what is explainable within natural means; and if they can't explain something, yet still believe it to be true, they are ridiculed as fools. However this should never be! Christians should allow the "miracle explanation" to be a viable explanation for something. Why? Just because something is not explainable through one paradigm doesn't mean that another paradigm cannot explain the event in question. Science offers a wonderful form of discovery but it is limited in what it allows us to discover; and so sometimes science has to step aside and let another side of life have the spotlight. This allows reality to be seen more fully.
However Christians ought not to go from one extreme of trying to explaining everything within the realm of scientific inquiry so to save face in this skeptical community, to the equally opposite irrational position of calling "everything" a miracle! In 1994, I went to Toronto for a Billy Graham, Youth Crusade with my church youth-group. I was lucky that I was with my youth leader because for a time we got separated from my youth group. My youth group was about a group of 30 youth, with no identifiable features to tell them a part, in a group of about 20,000 youth, who likewise didn't have any identifiable features; (can we say "needle in a haystack" boys and girls?!) My youth leader had a pare of binoculars with him and so we used them to see if we could locate our group of 30 specific teenagers in the group of 20,000 teenagers. He put the binoculars up to his eyes, randomly pointed upwards and "boom!", he found our entire youth group, together on the first try, up in the nosebleed section of the baseball stadium that hosted the event that night.
One may argue that was "a miracle" as: "what are the chances of finding 30 specific youth, together, in a group, in a group of 20,000 youth on the first try?" The answer is: improbable but possible. It was fantastic that we found the group on the first try, and we prayed that we would find our group as we were both unsettled about being separated from the group; and when we found our group we were both very relieved. To this day I believe that God heard our prayer and eased our jitters; but because it was mathematically possible that our group was together and discoverable on the first random try it was not a miracle that we found them on the first try. However does that mean that God wasn't at work and that we just beat the odds? No, as something doesn't need to be naturally or mathematically unexplainable for it to be the work of God.
If that wasn't a miracle: what is a miracle? A miracle is simply an event that is not possible within natural means, such as my crops growing from seeds to tomatoes in just one hour. However what if I prayed that day for a quick harvest and my crops did spring up ready for the picking within an hour of being planted: how is explaining this phenomena as a miracle an invalid explanation? If Scripture is true and that God created the world from nothing (cf. Genesis 1:1) (a violation of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics: a.k.a, "a miracle"), which includes my plants doesn't God have the ability to cause my crops to grow within record time? Yes! He created them with the ability to emerge within 7-10 days, so it stands to reason that He has the ability to speed up the process if He so chose to do so.
Therefore one reason why Christians should allow a miraculous event to be a miracle and not try to explain it away naturally is because it is possible if God is in play. A miraculous event is not explainable within science, but there are a lot of facts of reality that science cannot explain, but that doesn't mean that they are any less factual than gravity is, factual.
Another reason that a Christian ought to allow miracles to be a part of reality is without one specific miracle happening we will all die in our sins and transgressions. The apostle Paul writes that in order to be saved from eternal damnation we first must confess that Jesus is LORD and believe that His Father in heaven raised him from physical death (cf. Romans 9:10). Jesus was physically dead and three days later (known as "Easter Sunday) He was not. Jesus was not a zombie, He was - again - a living being. God regenerated the dead cells of His body and gave His body new life. Jesus did this so to pay the consequences of sin (cf. John 6:23a) and to give us sinners eternal life through a regenerated physical existence of our own (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:42-49; John 6:23b). If miracles can't happen, then Jesus didn't rise from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:12-18), leaving us all to be condemned to eternity without God in Hell.
A third reason why miracles ought to be supported is simply due to the fact that they show God's awe and wonder. God has 100% sovereignty and power over His creation and every miracle God does shows His mighty power. Moreover, this natural creation performs the same function (cf. Romans 1:20); even though a sunrise or a sunset it is not a miraculous event, as pointed out above the mere existence of the sun and the rest of creation is the face of a miracle that has already happened namely creation; and thus there is a miracle worker in play who deserves to be honoured and worshiped.
To conclude, Christians ought to represent miracles when they appear. Miracles show God's glory through creation, and they show that the picture of reality is a lot more complicated than what one mere academic field, namely science can highlight for us.
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