Day 153: Intricacies
– adjective
1. having many interrelated parts or facets; entangled or involved: an intricate maze.
2. complex; complicated; hard to understand, work, or make: an intricate machine.
The adjective intricacies has been running through my head since the second day of my most recent walk in Spain. Why? No real clue. Before my recent conversion back to my unfettered belief in Jesus, the shackles that kept me tethered to my agnostic beliefs was the belief that no loving God could let tragedies happen. Inflictions such as harsh or early death, rapes, birth defects, catastrophic storms, war, the list is endless. Then, in light of my recent loss, I realized that maybe God does “things” to work in the intricacies of our lives, as opposed to working in the grandiose. The realized growth, when you allow it, is like 1000 lives lived. The lessons that are continually being learned, as MasterCard coined, are priceless. If God gave us a grandiose exhibition of his power, it might not have an impact on the furthest crevices of our being. It’s in these crevices that daily small miracles can transform our lives with more profound impact than the fading memory of an unimaginable miracle: the grandiose.
As a major side note, what I am saying presupposes three things: (1) that you believe in heaven; (2) that you believe this life is batting practice for the big game, i.e., the next life; (3) that Jesus is the only way to heaven. These things have to be believed or, at least understood reading forward. You don’t have to believe. You just have to know this was written with those 3 things as a foundation.
Huge miracles are soon forgotten. Do you remember the last grandiose miracle in our lifetime? I can’t. Big miracles become folklore. Folklore is soon a bedtime story much like Cinderella. Major miracles then were even dismissed as signs of witchcraft or, a dark force or evil. Now days they are just considered bedtime stories with a lesson. Just like…Cinderella.
Why would miracles in this day and age be any different? Even the miracles in Lourdes, France, the most modern miracles, are scrutinized as trumped-up. Fictional. I not only propose that daily, intricate miracles have a more profound, lasting effect on a person, I am living it. A personal miracle is something a person can Qualify, Quantify and Analyze. And when you are done with the QQA, you see that it was truly a miracle. Ok. A skeptic can say the first time it is cosmic coincidence. I get that. But, the 2nd, 3rd, 10th time? You can’t explain that away with intellect or coincidence.
I had a very real QQA miracle recently. I can’t elaborate in major detail for the fear of offending someone who might follow my post, but God answered a direct prayer recently within a week of praying for it. This miracle is as real as if God had told a paralyzed man to rise and walk. So, armed with this miracle, I should never doubt God right? Wrong.
Daily, I forget this miracle. It was soooo huge of a miracle that to forget it would be similar to crashing in a plane and ten minutes later you walk away and forgot you crashed. I ask myself, why would I forget the power of God only a week later? A month later? A few months later? I started to doubt the miracle in short order. I thought, “it was a coincidence, it was a random event at the exact right time, it was inevitable cosmic highways colliding”. I realize that in our over-stimulated, brainwashed landscape, we can forget the unforgettable easily or simply shrug them off.
How soon would we forget Lazurath’s resurrection if it happened in this day and age? Would we chalk it up to rumor? Lore? Or, bar talk?. Point is for me, God works in what speaks to an individual’s entangled heart. I now have these same little miracles happen often. Hard to ignore praying for something and it happening. With that said, I don’t get everything I pray for. Only the things that fall in line with what I am understanding as my purpose in life.
I will use my tragic loss for an example. I know God didn’t give my wife cancer. [It took me a long time to come to this conclusion]. He could have healed her. For a time, I cussed God for not healing her. It didn’t seem fair to her or me. It still doesn’t. However, while God doesn’t cause bad things to happen, God does use situations to his benefit when they do happen. He has a bigger plan than you or I can fathom in the moment, or ever for that matter. This only works for those that allow it to. It’s called faith. Her death brought me back to Jesus after 22 years far, far removed. Something that I never thought would happen in a million years. I was so entrenched in my agnostic beliefs that I thought nothing on this planet would change my mind. I went through a period after her death that I thought God killed her to get my attention. I have later realized that this is a very narcissistic view of her passing. I needed answers and the universe owed them to me, I felt. Better yet, God owed this to me.
The end conclusion: The world can’t be saved in one mighty act of proof or answer writing on a wall by the Hand of God itself. It would soon be forgotten or chalked up to Lore. Besides, life is best experienced in pure hope. When there is literally nothing else…give me hope over anything.
God works with the little things, almost exclusively. A spouse dies, A spouse finds meaning in the search for why. Why gives way to hope and hopefully, the survivor finds a scent to the trail of hope for reconciliation. Following that trail diligently will grow the survivor immensely and lead to the Peace of God