Only God Can See a Miracle

Faith is submission. It is the complete surrender of the self. It sets aside the illusion of omniscience and bows to the reality of God’s. It believes what He says over its own interpretive traditions. In this regard, faith is seeing through God’s eyes rather than one’s own. It is when one looks through His eyes that he may see the world as it truly is, as well as all of the miracles to be found therein. 

For the naturalist, the world is natural. There are no miracles. What one thinks he sees is what is. He mocks the Christian for His professed belief in God who does not make Himself known to all through the extraordinary. He looks at the world and sees an absence of God because he looks through his own eyes. He is a blind man crying out that all who think color exists are fools, as he sees no color himself. He chides God to open his eyes or he will not believe that color exists. He laughs that this supposed God provides no evidence to prove Himself to him. In essence, he wishes God to submit to him. He demands God yield to him so that he may see color while blind. Yet, faith is the cure for blindness this blind man has rejected.

To justify himself, he will laugh at such claims. “These are the mere ad hoc arguments for God doing no miracles in the world,” he might say. “Christians see no more miracles than atheists,” he smirks. But he would be wrong. I have been a shepherd of God’s people for two and a half decades now, and I can tell you that I see miracles that are much more profound than those the atheist is demanding.

I understand why the atheist wants to see certain types of miracles. When I was a child I used to ask God to split water for me and move mountains at my command, as I mistakenly thought Jesus was saying in the Gospels. It never happened of course because that’s not the type of normative miracle that God does. He performs miracles at every moment, but He only allows those who see through the eyes of faith to see them.

The atheist, like a child, wishes to see God juggle mountains. If God displays such fireworks, he will believe. But miracles are not for the unbelieving, but for the believing. Juggling mountains may be a neat trick, but no one is created by it; and God is the Creator, not a clown.

I see miracles every day. In people who were once hostile to God and who’s flesh wanted nothing to do with conforming to His will now opening their Bibles in prayer, sacrificing their time and effort to come to the gathering of Christians, to meet with Him and learn His will. In those who are chaos becoming ordered in their thinking and life, willing now to let go of the poisonous things in which they found such security and comfort, exchanging their self-direction to be directed by Christ instead. From absolute rebellion to absolute submission, from complete darkness to light, these ordinary miracles are greater than the ones that children seek because, unlike neat tricks, they are the true magic that changes the mind and soul of something rather ugly into something beautiful. Miracles are everywhere, but the blind cannot see them, and that is the point. Only God can see a miracle, and only those who come to Him in faith, therefore, ever know when they have had the privilege of witnessing one.