A thought by Charles R. Swindoll, from his book, Jesus: 09 (Great Lives Series) (p. 108). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.)
Ok, so what does he mean?
Charles says, "This is the notion that ancient people were habitually superstitious and automatically looked for a supernatural explanation for anything that baffled them. They viewed the world differently, but they were neither stupid nor easily deceived."
He continues, "Today, reasonable people exist in an uncomfortable tension between the dogma of science, which denies the existence of the supernatural, and the fanaticism of some television evangelists who peddle it for donations. And for those unwilling to suspend belief, the supernatural exhibitions of faith healers aren’t very convincing. They perform their illusions in very controlled environments, and the 'healings' are either limited to mild improvements or they claim results that are difficult to verify.
"Faith healers and skeptics notwithstanding, another realm transcends what we can experience with our senses and, on rare occasions, God allows us to see and touch. However, miracles don’t happen every day. 'If they did,' a colleague of mine once noted, 'we’d call them ‘regulars.' While they appear common in the Bible, miracles are in fact extremely rare in history. God reserves them for brief, remarkable periods of time just prior to His making a major change in how He interacts with His creation. For example, after four hundred years of silence, God astonished the Egyptians and the Hebrews with a series of miraculous events as He prepared His covenant people for the Promised Land."
Charles goes on, "To avoid any confusion, let me first define what I mean by the term miracle. When God created all things out of nothing, He also devised laws of nature, such as gravity and thermodynamics, to give order and purpose to everything in the universe. However, this is not to suggest He is a watchmaker God who assembled the cosmos, wound it up, and is allowing it to wind down with no further involvement from Him. While God, for the most part, allows this cosmos to work according to the laws of nature, there is never a time when He is not directly and personally involved in every detail of life. Nevertheless, His interaction with creation rarely involves a miracle.
"Sometimes, however, God dramatically defies the laws of nature in order to validate an event as divinely ordered. He parts the waters of a sea to make a dry path from one side to the other (Exodus 14:22). He causes a donkey to speak like a human (Numbers 22:28). He causes an axe head to float (2 Kings 6:6). He allows three young men to enter a blazing fire and emerge without singeing a hair (Daniel 3:23–27). And, as we read earlier, He allows a virgin to conceive a child without a human father. These are authentic miracles—dramatic, undeniable acts of God in which He demonstrates indisputable authority over the universe He created and continues to rule. And they usually remedy problems that are 'impossible' within the normal framework of life. Miracles remind us—as the angel reminded Mary—'Nothing will be impossible with God' (Luke 1:37)."
Charles then later says, "Because of Jesus, we can view life as a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations."
And that is so true, isn't it? Yes, yes! #continuethought
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