Why Can't He Be More Obvious?
God's always been an enigma. Even when he was leading the Israelites around in the desert for 40 years as a pillar of fire during the night and a cloud during the day they couldn’t believe in Him or trust Him. In our world today it’s much easier to miss him.
I asked my friends the preacher and the youth minister one evening why he couldn’t be obvious. If God used to do all those miracles and Jesus performed all the miracles the Bible attributes to him and His Apostles you’d think we’d see some of that now. “I’ve never had any miracles happen in my life,” I told them. “Why can’t God show me a miracle?”
They didn’t really have an answer other than, “would it matter?” Given all the miracles that have been performed in antiquity weren’t obvious enough for most people. “Haven’t I ever had something happen in my life that was miraculous,” they asked.
There’s another hang up I’ve had. People claim all kinds of stupid things are miracles. People claim miraculous healing, miraculous rescues, miraculous football plays, or hockey teams. All these things can be attributed to people, scientific advancement, or just dumb luck.
The trick is, God has always given us the choice to believe in Him or not; to trust Him or not; to seek and do His will or not. The meaning of life, the universe, and everything is a topic for another essay (and not 42 hitchhiker fans), but God has given us the choice to love Him or not.
You can’t make someone love you right. This is a universally accepted truth no matter your spiritual persuasion. Love is a choice freely made by definition…and the point of our creation, that being to Love God.
Now if God came up to you on the street and said, “Hey Dude! Here’s who I am, the proof you asked for, and what I expect from you” you’d be convinced. But, would you really have a choice in that? If God were to make himself totally undeniable to you would you have made that decision to Love him? Or, would you be trapped into an inevitable relationship?
This goes way back. Adam and Eve, whether you take their story as metaphor or literal fact, chose not to trust God. They gained the knowledge of good and evil. In other words, they realized they could choose God, or what was behind door number 2. Unfortunately the lure of door number 2 was too much temptation for them and we’re still living there today.
The other thing that is true is you have to ask. If you’ve never made a heart felt, honest request for a miracle, you’ve probably never had one, and wouldn’t likely have recognized it if you did. Evidently my questioning God’s lack of miracles in my life was an appropriate way to ask.
I really hesitate to write this here because it’s important to me that readers don’t think I’m some kook or write me off as any other religious zealot and discount anything else I have to say. If someone told me this story 4 years ago I’d have thought they were nuts myself. Never the less I’m convinced He has given me a simple little gift and I feel obligated to share it with people. Take it for what you will.
I told my friends that night that the only time I’d had anything in my life that could have been called a miracle was after my first son was born. My saintly wife had a really hard time. She was really sick, had a horrible migraine and couldn’t get out of bed. After three days in the hospital we had to leave anyway as that was all the insurance would pay for. I took my new family home, got her to bed, and put the baby wrapped up in his crib. Within an hour I was on the phone with 911 getting an ambulance to take her back into the hospital.
She couldn’t catch her breath. We got her to a different hospital and some oxygen. After a few hours X-rays showed a lot of fluid in her lungs. She ended up in ICU for 5 days. The night after she went back to the hospital, her blood oxygen level was so low she was on the edge of death, though I didn’t know it at the time. For unexplained reasons, though, she came back. Out of the hundred some doctors we got bills from none of them could determine what was wrong and none of them determined what turned her around.
I told the guys this. It was a story we hadn’t shared with them before. “But how can I say that God saved her,” I said. “Something the doctors did must have made a difference or whatever was wrong with her began to heal or something.” There were not loads of ways to explain that away, but there were enough.
That story always shakes me up when I think about it, even 11 years later when I was telling my friends. I lay in bed that night upset and not going to sleep. She asked what was wrong and I told her. I was laying on my right side and she wrapped herself around from behind me with her chin on the back of my head. She was really quiet and just held onto me.
I felt something like a spark from the spot on the back of my head where her chin was that fanned out behind my left eye. Weird sensation. Not comfortable, but I was curious enough to lie still. My legs started going numb like they were falling asleep. I had my arms crossed up funny and thought if I fall asleep that way they were really going to hurt in the morning.
Sure enough, the next thing I knew I was waking up in the morning, my arms were cramped and kinked, and hadn’t moved all night. I rolled over at the same time she rolled over from the other side of the bed. “What did you do last night,” I asked her. “You really want to know?” I had a pretty good idea, but, “Yea.” “I prayed to God that I knew he couldn’t take your troubles from you unless you offered them, but I asked him to help you fall asleep.”
How do you answer that? No excuses. No way to discount that or explain it away. Kinda had to accept that for the small miracle it was: my own personal answer from God.
I told my friends the next week when we met up, this time the Campus minister and the Youth Minister. I started with, “your gonna think I’m nuts.” And I finished with, “so you think I’m nuts?” They both had these big stupid grins. Jay, the campus minister, said, “I don’t think you’re such a skeptic anymore!”
It was true. Overcoming my intellectual problems with faith were really getting me there, but this gift he gave me. This answered prayer by my saintly wife. This response to my request for a miracle really pushed me over the edge.
It never hurts to ask. Give it a try.
I asked my friends the preacher and the youth minister one evening why he couldn’t be obvious. If God used to do all those miracles and Jesus performed all the miracles the Bible attributes to him and His Apostles you’d think we’d see some of that now. “I’ve never had any miracles happen in my life,” I told them. “Why can’t God show me a miracle?”
They didn’t really have an answer other than, “would it matter?” Given all the miracles that have been performed in antiquity weren’t obvious enough for most people. “Haven’t I ever had something happen in my life that was miraculous,” they asked.
There’s another hang up I’ve had. People claim all kinds of stupid things are miracles. People claim miraculous healing, miraculous rescues, miraculous football plays, or hockey teams. All these things can be attributed to people, scientific advancement, or just dumb luck.
The trick is, God has always given us the choice to believe in Him or not; to trust Him or not; to seek and do His will or not. The meaning of life, the universe, and everything is a topic for another essay (and not 42 hitchhiker fans), but God has given us the choice to love Him or not.
You can’t make someone love you right. This is a universally accepted truth no matter your spiritual persuasion. Love is a choice freely made by definition…and the point of our creation, that being to Love God.
Now if God came up to you on the street and said, “Hey Dude! Here’s who I am, the proof you asked for, and what I expect from you” you’d be convinced. But, would you really have a choice in that? If God were to make himself totally undeniable to you would you have made that decision to Love him? Or, would you be trapped into an inevitable relationship?
This goes way back. Adam and Eve, whether you take their story as metaphor or literal fact, chose not to trust God. They gained the knowledge of good and evil. In other words, they realized they could choose God, or what was behind door number 2. Unfortunately the lure of door number 2 was too much temptation for them and we’re still living there today.
The other thing that is true is you have to ask. If you’ve never made a heart felt, honest request for a miracle, you’ve probably never had one, and wouldn’t likely have recognized it if you did. Evidently my questioning God’s lack of miracles in my life was an appropriate way to ask.
I really hesitate to write this here because it’s important to me that readers don’t think I’m some kook or write me off as any other religious zealot and discount anything else I have to say. If someone told me this story 4 years ago I’d have thought they were nuts myself. Never the less I’m convinced He has given me a simple little gift and I feel obligated to share it with people. Take it for what you will.
I told my friends that night that the only time I’d had anything in my life that could have been called a miracle was after my first son was born. My saintly wife had a really hard time. She was really sick, had a horrible migraine and couldn’t get out of bed. After three days in the hospital we had to leave anyway as that was all the insurance would pay for. I took my new family home, got her to bed, and put the baby wrapped up in his crib. Within an hour I was on the phone with 911 getting an ambulance to take her back into the hospital.
She couldn’t catch her breath. We got her to a different hospital and some oxygen. After a few hours X-rays showed a lot of fluid in her lungs. She ended up in ICU for 5 days. The night after she went back to the hospital, her blood oxygen level was so low she was on the edge of death, though I didn’t know it at the time. For unexplained reasons, though, she came back. Out of the hundred some doctors we got bills from none of them could determine what was wrong and none of them determined what turned her around.
I told the guys this. It was a story we hadn’t shared with them before. “But how can I say that God saved her,” I said. “Something the doctors did must have made a difference or whatever was wrong with her began to heal or something.” There were not loads of ways to explain that away, but there were enough.
That story always shakes me up when I think about it, even 11 years later when I was telling my friends. I lay in bed that night upset and not going to sleep. She asked what was wrong and I told her. I was laying on my right side and she wrapped herself around from behind me with her chin on the back of my head. She was really quiet and just held onto me.
I felt something like a spark from the spot on the back of my head where her chin was that fanned out behind my left eye. Weird sensation. Not comfortable, but I was curious enough to lie still. My legs started going numb like they were falling asleep. I had my arms crossed up funny and thought if I fall asleep that way they were really going to hurt in the morning.
Sure enough, the next thing I knew I was waking up in the morning, my arms were cramped and kinked, and hadn’t moved all night. I rolled over at the same time she rolled over from the other side of the bed. “What did you do last night,” I asked her. “You really want to know?” I had a pretty good idea, but, “Yea.” “I prayed to God that I knew he couldn’t take your troubles from you unless you offered them, but I asked him to help you fall asleep.”
How do you answer that? No excuses. No way to discount that or explain it away. Kinda had to accept that for the small miracle it was: my own personal answer from God.
I told my friends the next week when we met up, this time the Campus minister and the Youth Minister. I started with, “your gonna think I’m nuts.” And I finished with, “so you think I’m nuts?” They both had these big stupid grins. Jay, the campus minister, said, “I don’t think you’re such a skeptic anymore!”
It was true. Overcoming my intellectual problems with faith were really getting me there, but this gift he gave me. This answered prayer by my saintly wife. This response to my request for a miracle really pushed me over the edge.
It never hurts to ask. Give it a try.
posted by John McGuire at 11:12 PM
1 Comments:
John,
I'm glad God answered your prayer. I enjoyed reading your story.
Love,
Jeff
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