Friday April 8, 2011

John 9:24-27

"So a second time the Pharisees called the man who had been blind and said to him, 'Give God the praise! We know that this man is a sinner.' He replied, 'If he is a sinner, I do not know. One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see.' So they said to him, 'What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?' The man answered them, 'I told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?'"

So I finally really put myself in the place of the Pharisees to see what this story has to say to me. And at least for today, I think it's this: I believe in miracles in theory, in the idea of miracles, and in finding miracles in every second, but if you presented me with an individual miracle I would quibble and I would play the skeptic and I would behave just as these Pharisees did. I'd like to think I wouldn't expel the messenger of the miracle, but I would think of them differently.

But how can I claim that I believe in miracles if I wouldn't believe in a miracle happening? I remember when my father was dying I was afraid to pray that he would get better. I didn't want to "bet my faith" on a miracle happening. And it's not that I didn't believe that God could save him, it's that I didn't think He would. And so right up until the very end I wouldn't even ask. Because I learned long ago that it breaks your heart less to pray that God's Will be done rather than for what you think should happen.

I believe in seeing the wonder of God's love in every moment we don't go spinning off into the vacuum of space - but do I, when you get down to it, believe the stories of miracles? Did I not play the skeptic in my own head when that nun was telling the story of the miracle that finally won her order's founder canonization? A miracle in this day and age? An age when it seems God has chosen a different tactic to reach us. But then, miracles were always rare and wondrous sights.

I think I used to believe in miracles. I believed that the veil between heaven and earth was thin enough that God upset the natural rules of the universe from time to time, for whatever ineffable reasons He had, and showed us His power. Showed us that all the things that have power over us here mean nothing. That death, sickness and pain were things that truly have no power over us, especially once we leave this life. That next to the love of God these things are trifles.

I don't know how you work at believing in something again, but I'm going to try how I can to get back there. Because I think the lesson of the existence of miracles itself, setting aside the lesson from any individual act of wonder, is important. That all the things which have power over us on earth are, in the end, nothing to the love of God.

Dear Lord, help me to believe again. Help me to never lose my faith in an avenue of Your love. Be with me and protect me however You will.