When was the last time you took notice of the air you breathe? How often do you appreciate the beauty of the sun rising from the east? Have you ever thanked a jeepney driver who labors hard to provide a functioning transport system in our community? Have you ever thought of the farmers and factory workers sweat their brow to deliver the food on your table? Probably seldom if not at all. There are hundreds of things and persons in our life whom we have taken for granted for they have always been there. We miss their importance in our lives for we have grown too familiar with them. Worse is, we have belittled the valuable role they play that enable us to live our life with ease.
More than the constancy of these things and persons in our life, our belief on what is significant allows us to identify those that matter in life and those that are worthy of our attention and praise. Only the grand and pompous often qualify to our category of significant and important; the superstar who has millions of followers, an event that captured the eyes and ears of people all over the world. They who have changed the world in an impressive manner matters for most of us, not the simple, not the silent. We appropriate great value to the sublime and take little notice of the mundane. But truth be told, in many ways than one, the ordinary contains an extraordinary beauty when carefully discern.
Someone once asked me, “Why don't miracles happen today; miracles like those in the Bible when the sea is parted into two, five loaves of bread are multiplied, when one can walk on water; miracles like levitation, stigmata, dead brought back to life?” In the post-modern era, when all knowledge needs to be verified by tangible evidence, a man long for Biblical miracles, healing miracles, apparitions, Eucharistic miracles etc. that can bridge his knowledge with that of the God. Why then these miracles cease when they are most needed by some to verify their belief in God? But do miracles really not happen today?
The word “miracle” comes from the Latin word “miraculum” meaning an object of wonder. Miracles leave us astounded, amazed as they unfold before us. They make us wonder. Miracles do happen today as our world is replete with wonderful things and persons. What is lost is our capacity to wonder through the unassuming and modest way. We dismiss a lot of wonderful things and persons God has gifted us with, as ordinary and simple, not wonderful. We long for the magnificent, the grandiose spectacle. That is how we expect a miracle to be. Miracles are not extraordinary in the first instance. They are first and foremost work of God. And that makes them extraordinary. This should be enough reason to leave us in awe and wonderment; miracles as works of God. Unfortunately, we have given God the responsibility to show us miracles the way we want them to be, more than us taking the responsibility of discerning the thousands of miracles he performs in our life, even in the simple and ordinary.
God fills our world, our life, and our very own body, with miracles; miracles that often occur through unpretentious ways. Our familiarity with these may prevent us from recognizing them as gifts from God. The recovery of our capacity to wonder, even just for the air we breathe, will enable to experience miracles in this modern world.
Wonder His marvelous work. It’s a miracle!
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