Intertwined

It’s a funny thing about miracles, they are done by God, but He often involves people in them.  We tend to think that they are “God things” and in one sense, everything that God does is “miraculous”.  When I see a newborn baby, I am prone to say, “This is a miracle”, but what I really mean is, “This is miraculous, in that it is the way that God has made it to work, but it is not really a miracle as it happens regularly this way.”

Certainly there are miracles that are “God things” alone. They are direct acts of God that suspend the physical reality and interject the touch of God. Many of the healings Jesus did, when Jesus set free the tormented and oppressed from evil spirits, many of the deliverances of His people from calamity and death like Daniel in lion’s den, or his friends from the fiery furnace, the burning bush in which He appeared to Moses and on I could go.  For our God is a God of miracle working power.  Our God reigns.

But it is important to understand that typically, miracles are intertwined between Deity and humanity: Jesus turned the water to wine, but He asked for the waterpots to be filled.  Jesus healed the lame man, but first Jesus called out for faith when He said, “Take up your bed and walk” or for the blind man, “do you want to be healed?”  “Lord, I want to receive my sight!”  “Be it done to you according to your faith.”  Even in the miracle of our salvation: Jesus being born of a virgin was miracle but Mary said, “be it done to me according to Thy Word.” (Luke 1)   And in bringing forgiveness to us, it is provided by God but received by us as we receive His gracious forgiveness—John 1:12  “as many as received Him He gave the right”  Miracles are generally intertwined between the hands of God and a heart of faith.