Who led the Israelites into the Promised Land?

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Progressive Christian

Last updated on: December 21, 2003 at 12:45 am by Cathleen Falsani

2003-12-21T00:45:00-07:00 Cathleen Falsani

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Miracles are everywhere if you know where to look

As I write this, I’m sitting next to a Christmas tree in a hospital reception area waiting for a miracle.

Not a parting-of-the-Red-Sea kind of miracle. Not a Virgin Mary on a tree trunk, nor a weeping icon.

It’s more of a Hanukkah kind of a miracle.

According to scripture, the miracle that Hanukkah commemorates wasn’t particularly flashy. There was no burning bush, no plague of darkness.

As the story goes, Judah Maccabee and his four brothers just had completed their successful guerrilla operation to recapture Jerusalem and its holy temple, which had been desecrated by the Greco-Syrians. As part of the reconsecration of the temple, Judah and his posse relit the temple’s lamp, but had enough oil for just one day.

Enter . . . The Miracle: The oil lasted for eight days.

Not exactly the stuff blockbuster films are made of, but miraculous still.

Something that wasn’t supposed to be, was. Something that shouldn’t have happened, did.

The miracle I’m waiting for is arguably even less dramatic than a long-lasting oil lamp. Some people would call it mere medical innovation, not miraculous at all. But, to me, the wonder of a doctor being able to use sutures so tiny — 1/1000 of an inch and invisible to the naked eye — to sew tiny bits of tissue together so they work again is every bit a miracle, as miraculous as turning water into wine.

The whole idea got me thinking about the nature of the miracle that Hanukkah, which begins at sundown today, is all about, and what, in our modern world, in which medical marvels literally can raise the dead and make the blind see, a miracle is, anyway.

In 1913, Mr. Webster defined a miracle in two ways. “In specific, an event or effect contrary to the established constitution and course of things, or a deviation from the known laws of nature; a supernatural event, or one transcending the order of laws by which the universe is governed.”

Webster also said a miracle was, simply, “a wonder or wonderful thing.”

Working with that last definition, miracles happen in my world all the time. Every day. All around me.

Some are more dramatic than others, like the time last spring when my Miata (read: motorized toboggan) hit a slick patch on the Congress bridge and did two 360s in heavy traffic, skidding across three lanes and onto the shoulder — without getting hit. Not a scratch. Not a dent. A miracle.

Or when a former colleague and her husband got lost on their way to a cafe in Israel and missed a suicide bomber at the cafe by a few minutes. Her seemingly God-given lack of any sense of direction saved their lives.

Then, there was a friend’s father who awoke from his comalike state to tell his wife and children he loved them just before he died. Doctors said that never happens. I believe them.

Sometimes, the divine intervention is more subtle.

Like showing up 40 minutes earlier than usual for a flight I absolutely had to make, only to find out the departure time had been moved up by an hour. I should have missed it. But I didn’t.

Or when a dear friend who’d struggled with medical problems for years had a perfect pregnancy and nearly painless childbirth.

And my baby brother getting out of Afghanistan with his plane and his self intact.

Or finding a parking space right out front of where I need to be. Snagging the last ticket. Getting the call from a long-lost friend at the moment I was thinking of him.

Those are just a few examples of the miraculous that come to mind, the ones in my own tiny universe that I know about.

I’m certain there are thousands of others that happen around me I’ll never know about, seemingly insignificant acts of kindness that mean a miracle for someone else.

Recently, I watched the film “Bruce Almighty” again, and something stood out among the theologically light platitudes that flow from the mouth of Morgan Freeman’s God.

In one scene, Bruce (Jim Carrey) and God (Freeman) are talking about miracles, Bruce’s debut of his miraculous divine power being the dramatic dividing of a bowl of tomato soup. Miracle as magic trick.

God tells Bruce that real, true miracles happen all around him. A single mother working two jobs who manages to get her kid to soccer practice on time. That’s a miracle, God says.

“You need a miracle?” God asks Bruce. “Be the miracle.”

Perhaps God reaches God’s hand into the world through us to touch someone who needs a miracle.

We may never know how giving up a seat on the L, digging out a dollar for the Streetwise guy, letting that minivan cut in front of us at the toll plaza, or smiling at a stranger can change their world.

Today, to me, the doctor and his thinner-than-gossamer thread are the miracles.

May we all be able to spot the miracles this Hanukkah and in the year to come.

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