The Necessary Scarcity of Miracles (Chapter 8) (Saturday in the second week of Lent)
PAUSE
As I enter prayer now, I pause to be still; to breathe slowly to recenter my scattered senses upon the presence of God.
(pause)
I pray Psalm 119: 76-77, repeating the words slowly, several times:
“May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant. Let your compassion come to me that I may live, for your law is my delight.”
REFLECT
Bible: You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! (Ps. 139: 13-17)
Book passage: I quote C. S. Lewis saying something we may not want to hear: “That God can and does, on occasions, modify the behavior of matter and produce what we call miracles is part of Christian faith; but the very conception of a common, and therefore stable, world demands that these occasions should be extremely rare.”* (p.96)
*C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), 25
ASK
Ask myself: Does this assertion that miracles have to be “extremely rate” match up with my experience? Does it echo what I’ve been taught? Does it help me find a little more peace with my situation? Ask the Lord: I take time now to marvel at the infinite complexity and intricate beauty of the world around me, giving thanks especially for the harmony of creation.
YIELD
A prayer of wonder and humility from Psalm 8: 1, 3-4
“Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens … When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?”
Amen
