Morning Devotional

August  4, 2005
"Miracles"      
    by Don Emmitte

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Meanwhile, the apostles were performing many miraculous signs and wonders among the people. And the believers were meeting regularly at the Temple in the area known as Solomon's Colonnade. No one else dared to join them, though everyone had high regard for them. And more and more people believed and were brought to the Lord--crowds of both men and women. As a result of the apostles' work, sick people were brought out into the streets on beds and mats so that Peter's shadow might fall across some of them as he went by. Crowds came in from the villages around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those possessed by evil spirits, and they were all healed. (Acts 5:12-16 NLT).

An Amish boy and his father were visiting a city and were in a new mall. They were amazed by almost everything they saw, but especially by two shiny, silver walls that could move apart and back together again. The boy asked his father, “What is this father?” The father (never having seen an elevator) responded, “Son, I have never seen anything like this in my life, I don’t know what it is.” While the boy and his father were watching wide-eyed, an old lady in a wheelchair rolled up to the moving walls and pressed a button. The walls opened and the lady rolled between them and into a small room. The walls closed and the boy and his father watched small circles of light with numbers above the wall light up. They continued to watch the circles light up in the reverse direction. The walls opened up again and a beautiful 24-year-old woman stepped out. The father said to his son, “It’s a miracle! Go get your mother.”

Well, after you finish laughing, let me emphasize that’s not the kinds of miracles we need today. We all look for miracles. We may feel trapped in a dead end job, or relationships that have seemed to leave us empty and unfulfilled, or pressured with the trials of life. All of us have a story to tell. We want a miracle. The early church saw them. They saw the lives of people changed. They experienced healings. They lived in the midst of miracles. They experienced the change only the Holy Spirit can make in the lives of people. The question remains, why not us? I believe it has something to do with our perspective. Like the humorous story in the beginning of our devotional, I think we don’t recognize the miracles of our day. That is not to say that God does not work today as he did in the early days of the church. However, it is to say that we often don’t see the power of God at work in our lives.

In a recent number of the "Sunday School Times" a story is told of an Eastern king which illustrates at once our delusion respecting natural processes, and also God's work and presence in them. The king was seated in a garden, and one of his counselors was speaking of the wonderful works of God. "Show me a sign," said the king, "and I will believe." "Here are four acorns," said the counselor, "will you, Majesty, plant them in the ground, and then stoop down for a moment and look into this clear pool of water?" The king did so, "Now," said the other, "look up." The king looked up and saw four oak-trees where he had planted the acorns. "Wonderful!" he exclaimed, "This is indeed the work of God." "How long were you looking into the water?" asked the counselor. "Only a second," said the king. "Eighty years have passed as a second," said the other. The king looked at his garments; they were threadbare. He looked at his reflection in the water; he had become an old man. "There is no miracle here, then," he said angrily. "Yes," said the other, "it is God's work, whether he did it in one second or in eighty years."