Sometimes God works miracles in non-miraculous ways. I think sometimes I expect him to have thunder and lightning to give answers, so that I just can’t miss them. Sometimes he does. Then again, sometimes, he doesn’t. Or maybe they’re faint signs, riddled with our own concerns and doubts.
Last month, as my family and I were driving to Vancouver, BC, on the way to a cruise, my grandma had a nose bleed. Normally, nose bleeds aren’t serious, but this one didn’t stop for hours. We were on a pretty tight schedule: not the best time to have an issue! We thought the nosebleed would clear up, but after about an hour of thinking that, it was still going. We were driving through a town by then, so we stopped in at a medical clinic. We were all quite concerned by then, and also concerned about how long a stop would take, especially if we had to go to an emergency room. After about an hour at the clinic, the doctor was able to stop the bleeding and we were able to continue on.
There was so much stress during this whole time. Gram was crying, and I was worried, and we all wondered if we were going to have to miss the ship. I don’t know if anyone else in my family was praying, but I was — hard. And in times like those, you pray for miracles. You pray for answers. You pray that darnit, God, why don’t you answer? I know you’re listening, but why aren’t you answering?
But I think he does answer us all the time. I think he gives us miracles all the time. I think even when we think he’s given us a hardship, maybe he’s given us a blessing, too. Gram could have had a heart attack, not a nosebleed. The medical clinic could have sent us to the hospital due to the seriousness of the injury, but they were able to quickly treat it and send us on our way. The cruise ship people could have been grumpy when we arrived late, or not even let us on the ship, but they were unbelievably nice.
Times like these make you realize that life is full of answers, of inexplicable experiences: of miracles, even when we don’t notice or care. How many things could have gone wrong, and how only a few did. And now, I’m able to ponder the day, sitting on the ship, looking out at Vancouver, and thanking God for the bazillions of little miracles he did for us today.
Maybe I’m overthinking this; maybe I’m putting “miracles into God’s hands,” as it were. But I think not really. When I’m talking about the God who has the power to stop time, to freeze it for one and speed it for another, to control time and generation, to create down to the minutest detail — I think I can’t put it past him to be so intimately involved in his creation — to love us so much — that he could create thousands of miracles for us in a week and hundreds in a day.
