Practical Miracles ... It's In Our Hands

--- from The Problem with Miracles by Barbara Brown Taylor (Forward Movement Publications, 1990).


The problem with miracles is that we tend to get mesmerized by them, focusing on God's responsibility and forgetting our own. Miracles let us off the hook. They appeal to the part of us that is all too happy to let God feed the crowd, save the world, do it all. We do not have what it takes, after all. What we have to offer is not enough to make any difference at all, so we hold back and wait for a miracle, looking after our own needs and looking for God to help those who cannot help themselves. . .

"They need not go away," Jesus says, "you give them something to eat."  Not me but you; not my bread but yours; not sometime or somewhere else but right here and now.  Stop looking for someone else to solve the problem and solve it yourselves.  Stop waiting for food to fall from the sky and share what you have.  Stop waiting for a miracle and participate in one instead.