 C. S. Lewis (@CSLewisDaily)Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some to see. |
When I got sick at first all I wanted was for everything to go back to normal. I thought that could be God's miracle in my life, and everyone else was hoping for the same thing. But it never came; eight years later it still hasn't. So, what does that mean?
They are very controversial, miracles. I mean, we all love a good miracle, right? Especially one we can see with our own eyes. But does it have to be seen to be a miracle? Does it have to be physical to be a miracle? What was the point of Christ performing all those miracles in the New Testament? Why did He heal people? Did He really need to do that? And what was He really healing anyway?
Yes, I believe that Christ literally healed the sick, the lame, the blind, and raised the dead, but is that all He was doing? Was it all just to heal people from physical setbacks or tragedies in their lives? Was there nothing spiritual going on?
Depending on how you were raised, this may be difficult to hear. I know if you had made me read what I'm writing now, when I first got sick, I would have been so mad I would have been sick to my stomach. "How dare you not have hope I can be physically healed?! How small is your God?!" I would have wanted to never speak to you again until you got your perspective and beliefs "fixed". But something changed over the first few years with Still's Disease. I changed. My faith changed. My relationship with God and with Christ changed. Yeah, I was mad as hell at first, but somehow I began to slip away from the grasp of all that anger towards a calmer understanding about life and God and why things happen the way they do--why difficult things happen to seemingly good people.
I couldn't tell you when it exactly happened; big shifts in our perspective don't usually have "ah ha" moments. They tend to happen gradually without you being aware of it, and I think that's a good thing. I think our subconscious slowly gets us ready for something so unbelievably unordinary so this huge change doesn't scare us away from who we need to become. And God needed me to become someone who was ready for the Truth: His Truth.
His Truth is not easy: to hear, to live, to believe. If you think it is, you don't know His Truth yet, trust me. The change God brought about, the unbelievable and unordinary thing I was learning subconsciously will sound crazy, but here it is: you do not need to be healthy. Crazy, right? Now, if you are thinking, "duh!" then look a little more closely at life. Why is it such a tragedy when we get sick? If we really knew we didn't need to be physically healthy, why does it feel like the end of the world when we aren't? Because we have been tricked into thinking that we do and we aren't even aware of it. I am here to tell you: be aware of it!
I occasionally try to explain to family and friends, sometimes even strangers, that I do not need to be healed, and they look at me like I'm nuts. And then they have presumptuousness to tell me why that is sad, or wrong, or how I have no faith and have lost hope and that they will pray for me. I swear, I would do almost anything to get everyone to stop waiting for my miracle to come and to stop wondering why it hasn't already and to stop telling me what I should and shouldn't do so that it comes sooner...you have no idea how much it hurts.
At first it hurt because I couldn't believe how weak they thought my faith was. How weak they thought I was. But now, now it hurts because I feel unexplainably sad they missed the actual miracle God performed already, and had planned all along.
My miracle was written in letters so small they couldn't and still can't see them. And if they could, they would have the overwhelming feeling of love God pours on each of us everyday by knowing the miraculous story God has written for us in letters so big they can't see those either.
In college my professor taught us to read the Bible two ways. The first was to read it and look for the literal meaning of the text. For instance, who are these people historically, where were they living, what was life like, who was their ruler, what were their customs and cultures and what literally happened in their story in the Bible.
This literal understanding was to help us not just to understand our past as a way of living a better future, but to help us understand where our faith started, where it came from, how it was born, how it thrived or suffered, and to know that there were people, real people just like us, trying just like us, to live in this world knowing we aren't of it.
We need to know they struggled just like us and how their faith did or didn't get them through. We need to know they made mistakes just like us. We need to know they fell short of God and so will we, but we can learn from these people, our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and how they found their way back to God so we can too. And this literal meaning of the text is invaluable to our understanding the Bible and God and His story, which is also our story.
But the second way she taught us to interpret the text is to look for the spiritual meaning of the passage or verses or story. And yes, this part gets very subjective and tricky, for it is all too easy to interpret what we want to hear instead of what we need to hear. This is the way the devil loves us to read the bible, subjectively, reading things into stories and poetry and songs that just aren't there, especially if it helps us do the opposite of what God wants us to do.
An example is when Donald Miller pointed out in one of his books that we in Western Christianity, especially in America, were consciously and subconsciously taught to read the Bible as a self-help book to help us achieve the corrupted "American Dream". However, I have learned that despite this upbringing, it is possible to do our best to avoid the selfish way of interpreting the text spiritually. It is possible to realize a lot of the bible is prose (story), and to realize what that means spiritually to us individually, as a world, as a culture, and as a group of imperfect beings trying to follow and love a perfect God. There are even many non Christians who read the bible as a book of stories, and while this may worry you, it can offer some of God's Truth.
Something a non-Christian would interpret in the Bible, as they read it as fictitious story instead of historical Truth, is that the miracles Christ performed weren't literal miracles--or in our case, just literal miracles. And what if that's true? What if they represented something else, something more, something spiritual? What if the real miracle that happened when Christ healed them, wasn't physical at all?
What if the miracle wasn't that they could physically walk again, but that they could walk in faith on God's path instead of their own?
What if instead of being healed of their physical blindness they were actually healed of their spiritual blindness?
What if instead of physically being raised from the dead, they were spiritually raised from the dead?
Now, I'm not discrediting the literal miracles that Christ performed. I actually believe He did do those things and still could and does do them now. I also believe that their culture, at that time, needed to see Him do those things so they could believe He was the Son of God. I am just asking you to look deeper.
I am just asking you to think about the Bible as a book of stories.
I am just asking you to ponder and pontificate over the spiritual meaning of those miracles. Could they symbolize something more? Could those physical miracles also be part of God's storytelling and story writing? Could God be trying to get us to realize something so much bigger than being physical healed happened those days? Could they be metaphors for an internal spiritual change as well?
And if they are, now, today, in our culture, where we don't have Christ walking around trying to show everyone He is the Son of God because we already have the stories of Him performing those miracles and that is the proof for our generations, could the actual miracles of our day be less something you see with your eyes, which already happened, and more something you see with your heart guided by the Holy Spirit?
And if so, if those are the miracles written in small letters of our time, the spiritual ones, isn't it about time someone wrote them down. It's about time someone started spreading the word around town of a man who can heal your heart and your soul?
All you need is to have faith--to believe and know He is indeed the Son of God, and you shall be healed.
The question now is, what needs healed?
What miracle are you waiting for?
What miracle do you need?
What miracle do you want?
What miracle is actually going to happen and which one should?
Just, please, try to remember, that your miracle should be "the story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some to see."
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