In a nominally Christian country we grow up with tales of the miracles of Jesus. Most religions and all mythologies tell of miraculous happenings. And they can seem so far removed from ordinary life that we have to suspend logic and accept… or not… on faith alone.
There are many ways to define a miracle. Theologians attribute them to divine intervention, scientists speak of natural laws, though often only to describe and document rather than to explain. This is not a reactionary perspective, for I have never felt that science and faith should be mutually exclusive. But run a search on the definition of ‘life’ and you will see what I mean.
One of the best definitions of a miracle I have heard calls it ‘an extraordinary event which beholders can reduce to no law with which they are acquainted’. In those terms we live in an incredible world where miracles abound and brush through our daily lives largely unnoticed.
Definitions, however, can only attempt to describe in words something we experience through emotion. Many of us will be reminded, out of the blue at some point, of the incredible organisation of Nature. The beauty of the intertwined chains of dependency shared by all life on the planet. .. an intricacy science can detail for us, but cannot, ultimately, adequately explain.
Our lives are held in a matrix of miracles so familiar that we are seldom consciously aware of them.
There are miracles everywhere, quiet ones that slip through the cracks in our lives and fill a grey day with sunshine. These are the miracles, large and small, of the human spirit.
Few parents will have held their newborn child for the first time without that word and that wonder creeping across a dazed and awestruck mind. It matters not at all in that moment that we know the science of reproduction… we simply gaze at the perfection we hold in a mixture of love, surprise and incredulity and experience the touch of the miraculous.
What of the random act of kindness that comes from nowhere when most needed? It may be that something as simple as an unexpected smile can change a whole day.
Then there are the unlooked for meetings where two hearts come together and meld in love or friendship, unlikely pairings that leave lives that so touch complete and fulfilled. Have you ever considered the odds against that on a planet with a population of over seven billion people and all the permutations that brings?
We all know of the unobtrusive examples of courage and determination that show what heights the human spirit can attain, yet do so silently, simply by Being who they are. “That’s how it’s done. Quietly and unassumingly,” wrote a friend with whom I was discussing this point today, “leading others to make their own discoveries and achievements.”
These people, who address the challenges in life with a simple grace and dignity, these are the ones who inspire and encourage us. These are the people we respect and admire, though we may not even consciously notice that as they slip through our lives. They can be so close and so familiar we just accept them as they are, never stopping to recognise the way their living influences our own. We become so used to the beauty of their spirit that we forget to see it.
Sometimes, just sometimes, we are lucky enough to see them for what they are. For me last night was one of those moments as I looked at a photograph and was reminded that the human spirit is capable of facing unrealistic odds and achieving the impossible.
These are the people we can meet every day and who, quietly and without fuss, can change your world, bringing hope and encouraging us to wake up and be alive in the fullest sense. For me, the beauty of the human spirit is a true miracle.
From the archives – November 2012
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 
Pretty good definition of “miracle.” But you and I, we have both experienced miracles. They are — from a personal standpoint — hard to miss and harder to ignore. Impossible to explain and I no longer try 🙂
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No.. Just accepting them is enough 🙂
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The church tries to distinguish between an epiphany and a miraculous experience even though, in both instances, the believer is “touched by God.” It seems like a silly distinction and any experience is so rare these days we might as well embrace it without question, especially since the Church wants to cast so many outside its circle when the circle is shrinking rapidly on its own.
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I doubt the One belongs to any church or faction somehow.. How we think we can appropriate It, I do not know…
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Miracle has many different form that came along from time to time in life.
I experienced this quite often in life that I thought for awhile, wondering and thinking, felt as if someone or something is THERE with you since the BEGINNING, taking care of you.
A miracle events that I cannot forget was the many moments when Death were that close to grab you and yet something else there either luring me away and saved my life as turning me other way round to look out the other doors or windows so I would not go forward using the wrong road to nothingness … Now, that was or is still, some sort of ‘Miracle’ to me … My miracles, yes … 🙂
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I think anything may count as a miracle when it brings into consciousness the knowledge of something beyond human experience x
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Yes, it is. We all do have that MIRACLE in our lives. 🙂
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🙂
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Very well said Sue. Yes miracles happen all the time, however I think most of us take them for granted. You bring it into focus. Thank you. :o)
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I like to see them in the small things…
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Reblogged this on oshriradhekrishnabole.
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Agreed, and as usual, so well put. We are surrounded by everyday miracles and it pays to pause and recognize them. So many blessings!
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They don’t have to be big things with bells on after all 🙂
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Agreed. 🙂
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🙂
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Beautiful piece of writing, Sue, and I so agree with you. We tend to call only the things we cant explain miracles, but really, they’re happening around us all the time.
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They are… even we are miracles 🙂
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Some of us, hehe!
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😀 x
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