As Christians we know this line to be complete rubbish as we have a wealth of historic examples down the centuries of God pulling some amazing miracles and yet still people fail to believe in him.
One of the best and earliest examples has to be the Hebrews shortly after they had been led out of Egypt to freedom by Moses. Moses leaves them for a short while whilst he goes up Mt. Sinai and on his return he finds that the people have melted down a load of their trinkets to make a golden calf which they begin to worship. This is the same group of people who had just witnessed miraculous provision of food. The same group of people who had been saved from the advancing Egyptian army by the parting of the Red Sea. Despite all that they witnessed, they turned their backs on God almost immediately.
Here we are thousands of years later and little has changed in the world! This is how we know that the line "If God shows me a miracle I'll believe" is total tosh. If the Hebrews who saw miracle after miracle can't believe then the average guy on the street has no chance.
Maybe this is why some of the amazing and miraculous stories emerging from Haiti are being ignored. Amazingly on TV, websites and newspapers across the world stories of miraculous survival are beginning to emerge (Miracle survivor found as Haiti rescue teams ordered to stand down, Haiti quake: Survivors' stories) and yet the doubters who hide behind the line "If God shows me a miracle I'll believe" don't appear to be rushing off to find God for themselves. Maybe they're still pondering the earlier question: Why does God allow natural disasters?
So for those still hiding behind the tosh, here's a few real life miracles to help on your journey to faith in the living God.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the tale of Estonian protection officer Tarmo Joveer, found beneath the rubble of the international body's collapsed headquarters in Port-au-Prince. Mr Ban went on to say: "It was a small, small miracle during a night which brought few other miracles",
An Israeli rescue team managed to cut a small tunnel through the ruins of the national tax office to save its administrative director, Frances Gilles. Mr Gilles was freed after eight hours of painstaking and dangerous effort. He said he had heard voices and cars for days, but had lost the strength to shout. "I think I am privileged and my rescue is like a miracle because at one time I thought I would be abandoned".
Also on Sunday, crews rescued the UN's Danish civil affairs officer, Jens Kristensen, who was found fully conscious under the wreckage of its five-storey headquarters in Port-au-Prince. His mother told the BBC that: "It's a miracle really that he has been drawn out, alive and no damage at all to his body".
A Peruvian team managed to pull Maxine Fallon from the remains of a flattened school on Sunday. Ms Fallon said she had prayed fiercely for someone to find her. "I had hoped I would be rescued," she told CNN.
Mexican and South African rescue teams pulled Ena Zizi out of the rubble almost exactly one week after the quake struck. "We kept working until I could reach the woman and I felt she grabbed my hand and squeezed it strongly and I felt that God had touched my hand," said one of the Mexican rescuers. Ms Zizi was dehydrated and had a dislocated hip and broken leg but sang as she was carried away on a stretcher. She said her faith had kept her going and she had prayed constantly during her ordeal. Her son Joseph said it was a miracle she had survived.
The parents of 15 day old Elisabeth Joassaint had given up hope that she was alive after their house collapsed with her on the upper floor, French media reported. By the time she was rescued, uninjured, on 19 January, she had spent half her life trapped in rubble."This wasn't the way Jesus wanted the baby to die," her grandfather, Michelet Joassaint, was quoted by The Times as saying. "Everybody knew the baby was dead, except the Lord."
Ms Hotteline had been in an apartment over a supermarket in Port-au-Prince when it collapsed. After seven days in the rubble with no food or water, she was finally pulled out by Turkish, French and Haitian teams. One rescue worker said it was a miracle they had been able to save her.
Emmannuel Buso was rescued on Friday after an Israeli search team was approached by his relatives asking for help. In an interview with the Associated Press, Mr Buso described coming out of the shower when the quake hit. "I felt the house dancing around me," he said. "I didn't know if I was up or down." He had had a little space around him when the furniture in his room collapsed, but he had not had any food. He had drunk his own urine to keep thirst at bay. "I am here today because God wants it," he said.
Mendji Bahina Sanon was pulled out after spending eight days buried under Haiti's rubble. One of five children - four of whom survived the earthquake - she was rescued after being trapped beneath the remains of her home in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Being treated in hospital, doctors say she is regaining strength and doing well though she is troubled by nightmares, begging her mother not to "leave her in the hole". The surgeon treating her at a French field hospital described her survival as as "a miracle".
Wismond Exantus was working in the grocery store in the Napoli Inn Hotel when the building collapsed. Trapped for 11 days, he was found in good health after a joint operation by French, Greek and American rescue teams. He said he had survived by diving under a desk when the building collapsed around him, and had subsisted on a diet of Coca-Cola and biscuits. "It was God who was tucking me away in his arms. It gave me strength", he told AP.
These stories were edited from the BBC News article: Haiti quake: Survivors' stories
This makes me weep. I think every day is filled with miracles, but that is how I am.
ReplyDeleteGod is not a vending machine that responds when you put a coin in; God initiates all, longing for our response.
*That* response, that is the miracle!
Fran