New Beginnings: God of miracles – 8 December 2021

Do you believe in miracles? This is an ideal time to consider this because Christmas is about amazing events that happened because an amazing God was born into our world that first Christmas, inviting the world to change its perceptions forever.

Someone viewing a difficult situation may be heard to exclaim, “It will be a miracle if that happens!” giving a sense of doubt about a remote possibility; whereas a status that reads, “Our God is the God of the impossible”, is a confident declaration about God’s limitless capacity to do the phenomenal, and is a statement of faith. But both speak of miracles.

CS Lewis wrote that, “Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” This observation of God’s power to work in creation, and yet impact the world through a person’s life, certainly captures the essence of the measures we are reflecting on in Advent.

Great or small, these amazing events can only be described as miraculous because although we can’t understand them, or do such things ourselves, they evoke a response: they’re real events that are visible to all people, believers or not. They make a statement about God’s power which expands knowledge and understanding of Him, enhances our faith and encourages our hope.

Although the virgin birth is a crucial miracle of God involving Himself in an earthly event which demands great faith, Elizabeth’s miraculous pregnancy in her old age, after being barren all her life, was as necessary as Mary’s to God’s plan of salvation for the world.

The miracle of John the Baptist’s conception brought joy and understanding to his devout, elderly parents, but also presented the promised forerunner to the world, vital in preparing the way for Jesus. “And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:17)

God continues to work miracles for the greater good in any situation He sees fit, “For nothing will be impossible with God”; (Luke 1:37) and, even today, many formerly barren situations have been and continue to be fulfilled in a miraculous way.

Do we sometimes overlook miracles because we aren’t looking with eyes of faith at how God works in the everyday just as He does in eternity?

He came to earth; could there be a greater miracle?

Where are you today?

Prayer: Loving Father, open my eyes and my heart to the greatest miracle possible on earth of having You in my life through Jesus Christ the Lord. Amen