The Christian Healing Mission
Gently changing the way people experience God to find relationship, healing and transformation
Thoughts from Rob . . .
The Miraculous Mundane
We shouldn’t expect or suggest to anyone in the midst of suffering that they should ‘look on the bright side’ but there is value in cultivating a practice of thankfulness in the ‘good times’. It can remind us in the difficult days of God’s great love for us and for creation and enables a habit of trust.
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My wonderful grandmother was born in poor circumstances as a farm labourers’ daughter, went ‘into service’ as a maid to a landed family and later married an engineer in the Royal Flying Corp. She witnessed two world wars endured many struggles including several deaths in traumatic circumstances of some of those closest to her. When she used the phrase ‘Count your blessings’ she did so neither glibly nor with bitterness. Rather, it was gratitude and joy for the everyday miracles that sustained her Christian faith and enabled her to live in loving relationship with God, family and friends throughout her long life.
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Perhaps she had in mind St Paul’s advice in Philippians 4:4-7 "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
I know she also had in mind and heart, gratitude for the miraculous improvements in medicine which she had seen in her lifetime; and in her eyes, joy at the miracle of living things; loving especially, the delight of daffodils and other spring flowers bursting forth with valiant exuberance.
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When Jesus chastises the scribes and Pharisees who say to him - “Teacher we wish to see a sign from you” (Matthew 12:39 NRSV), his response sounds fierce; “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign”… Jesus is not counselling against an expectation of, or hope for, the miraculous, rather he is condemning a trial or tempting of God that is without cause, without pastoral need - just as he chastised the tempter in the wilderness.
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Amazing healings and miracles happen today just as they did in Jesus’ earthly ministry before his passion and resurrection. Yet desire for the brilliance of spectacle, the dazzling allure of the perhaps more exciting and inexplicably miraculous, can dull our senses to the ‘mundane’ miraculous. We can forget that God works as much through the everyday care and expertise of medical professionals; teachers, rescue workers, inventors, scientists – indeed all human activity that is life-giving and life affirming.
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It is good to be expectant of the miraculous – especially as we approach the fundamental miracle of Easter Day, but we should include acknowledgement of, and gratitude for, the mundane miracles, those everyday miracles which brought light, life and faith to my grandmother.