Is It Really A Miracle?

I must say, I get discouraged when I don't have time or energy to write.  Oh, I do plenty of writing, but most of it is driven by the graduate program I'm in and has a grade attached to the end of it.  But today, I'm bundled up in my flannel pajamas and thick bathrobe, complete with snuggly socks.  I'm not sick, I'm not tired, I'm just enjoying a crisp but sunny Saturday with a steaming cup of coffee and with one more assignment under my belt, I now have time and energy to write what I've been meaning to for weeks.

Every year, our church women get together at a beautiful conference center for a fall retreat.  This year, we met October 30 - November 1, and studied the lives of God's "Faith Filled Women": Ruth, Mary & Elizabeth, and because we're Lutheran and feel we must, Katherine von Bora Luther.  I think what stood out to me most was that none of these women were extraordinary.  They lived their lives, doing what they needed to do from moment to moment, filled their culturally assigned roles to the best of their ability, and praised God for nothing more than those things.  They didn't look for special opportunities to shine; they didn't turn over rocks, seeking miraculous manifestations of God's power; and, somehow, I don't get the idea that they spent hours on their faces, begging for revival or renewal or regeneration or whatever the current "re-" word is in Christendom right now.  Yet despite their seeming lack of religious fervor (however you define it), God worked wonders - miracles, if you will - through their lives, their normal, everyday lives.

With that in mind, I want to share the miracle that God performed in our little group of women.  On Friday, our guitar player showed up late, and, inconveniently, her shoulder was frozen.  She didn't know why, she had done nothing to hurt it, it just mysteriously stopped working and started hurting.  She was in considerable pain and found playing very difficult.  What can one do with a three-inch range of motion?  She didn't complain, she did what she could, but it was very disconcerting.  However, on Saturday night, one of the ladies prayed for her healing, and on Sunday morning, she woke up pain free, with full use of her arm.

Yeah, God!  But that's not the miracle I'm really excited about.  That miracle was the end result of months and months of women, and other people, too, just doing what they do.  Let me explain.

In May, my girlfriend and I, the worship coordinators for our retreat, were up late one night.  As women - even pushing 40 - are wont to do, we were having a bit of a giggle-fit.  It was late, we were tired, the dust on the table seemed funny, we couldn't get the cork out of the wine bottle (probably a good thing in the state we were in), and out of the blue, one of us suggested, "Hey - wouldn't it be neat if at this year's retreat, each woman had an anonymous secret prayer pal?  They can pray for each other Friday and Saturday; the big reveal can be during Saturday night communion!  How gooey and slushy is that?"

So that's what we did.  Each woman was paired up - no one, not even us, knew who had who; the women themselves didn't even know who they were praying for.  Saturday night, after the women met their prayer pals, our guitar player's pal prayed for her healing, and she was healed.

But that's not all!  God's devious machinations go even deeper than that.  You see, her pal wasn't one of our women, she was the friend of a friend of one of our women.  We didn't know her, she didn't know us.  She came up from Southern California, from another Lutheran church whose pastor had preached on healing the week before the retreat.  Now, if you're familiar at all with Lutheranism, you know already that we're generally not known for being overly demonstrative or for getting caught up in charismania; words on a wall during worship tend to frighten us and the highest our hands go during worship is high enough to receive Communion bread.  "Peace be with you...and also with you" is about as close to an "Amen!  Hallelujah, brother!" you will ever hear come out of our lips.  Not that we don't believe in God's healing power, but we tend to trust God to do that kind of thing, and far be it from us to issue prophetic words (unless they involve a future potluck - that's okay, because potlucks are always God's will).  So when our Southern California sister's pastor said what he did, you must realize that this sort of thing is quite out-of-character.

So...a week before our retreat, an anonymous Lutheran pastor in Southern California preached on the healing power of God.  At the end of the sermon, he said something to the effect of, "I don't know why I'm saying this, but I feel that someone in this congregation will, in the next week or so, meet someone with an injured shoulder; if that's you, you might take the opportunity to be a vehicle for God's healing power in their life."  And our stranger-sister who heard that drove up the next weekend to our tiny little retreat and, through the "luck of the draw", was paired up as a secret prayer pal to our guitarist with a mysteriously injured shoulder.

So, what's the miracle here?  Is it that God healed Sharon's shoulder?  Or is it that God took everyday, ordinary people doing ordinary things and wove them all together to accomplish the purpose he had set from the foundation of the world?  Not one of us prayed, "Dear God, please work a healing miracle during our retreat!"  What God did do - and this is what I consider to be "miraculous" - is inspire two giggly women who couldn't unstop their bottle of wine at 11:30 at night in the middle of May to have secret prayer pals in October.  He coaxed a Lutheran pastor - of all people - to challenge his congregation to be open to be used as healing vessels.  He nudged a stranger to us to join our retreat, and He tweaked Sharon's shoulder just so He could bless all of us with His love and grace...and give us a great story to tell others.

My ultimate question, though, is this:  is it really a miracle?  Somehow, I think this is pretty average stuff for God.  Maybe the miracle is that because we are united with Him, which is "walking in the Spirit", this kind of thing is average for us, too.