Thursday, July 2, 2009

WHAT'S A MIRACLE....?

A 14-year-old clings for hours in an ocean which has just swallowed up 152 lives from her crashed plane (Sun Times, July 2). They die, she lives, the media call it a miracle. But how to define that word....?

Science calls miracles as-yet-unexplainable phenomena. Statisticians call them beating-the-odds. Theologians call them extraordinary interventions. Atheists and agnostics call them luck.

Here's what some of us call them -- reminders! They are those totally incalculable split-seconds in the life of our world when something occurs beyond all possible means of reasoning. And so they lodge forever inside our hearts like a time-clock. If we ever we say "impossible" again, we can now remember the word has no firm place in the lexicon of life.

Think about that the next time you're bobbing alone in your ocean of troubles....!

2 comments:

  1. I consider myself just your average Christian, and I think this was in fact a miracle...and a beautiful one at that.

    Unfortunately not everyone has experienced a miracle. And it's definitely hard to think that you will when you are "bobbing alone in your ocean of troubles". But I guess it gives you a lifeline to cling to.

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  2. OK lets compromise and call it a miracle-to-remember. The event itself happens only once...but the memory of it can keep happening time and time again. As "your average Christian," I think it's the memory of that hope which helps us get from the Good Fridays to the Easter Sundays of our lives. Too bad our more rational peers can't count on this...

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