Our response when the inexplicable - a word which I've intentionally chosen over the one I believe to be more applicable in this week's events - occurs can include a broad range of thoughts and feelings. Oddly enough, Christians and nonbelievers may share many of them.
This week, good friends whom we've known since at least 1988 received a bona fide miracle. Their youngest daughter was born with a hearing impairment that took a couple years to diagnose. She has used hearing aids in the six years since to engage in conversational speech, and has been seeing a speech therapist to help her learn to speak normally.
About a year ago, this wonderful young girl had a conversion experience, accepting Jesus as her Savior. That night she reported to her parents that God had told her he was going to heal her and use that to bring many people to know him.
Last weekend the first part of that prophecy was fulfilled. At a sort of workshop/service on healing prayer, her hearing was fully restored. When she went down front for the boisterous youth praise and worship, she asked her mom to please hold her hearing aids, as she often did before entering this loud environment. She never took them back from her afterward, and at the end of the service, she told her dad she could hear.
What is your reaction to a story like this?
Mine is usually to search for the rational explanation. The most probable causes of most phenomena are rational ones, after all. Even when we pray for someone undergoing medical treatment, don't we end up attributing the credit or the blame to the medical process rather than to God? But what might the rational explanations be, exactly, in this case? Dishonesty about the child's condition before or after the service? Did she just "grow out" of some childhood condition, even though they had never been told that this was possible? Could her own mind have healed her by some unknown means?
None of these seem to apply in this case, and some of them require a more irrational faith than the one that atheists reject outright. "I have no idea what it could have been; I'm only certain that it couldn't have been 'God'!" I've spent time with this dear child, as recently as this past summer, and listened as her parents fretted about the expense of continuing to provide her with the aids that improved her hearing well enough to allow her to function in society. This couple is amazed and overjoyed at what has happened to their precious daughter. Still, my rational approach insists on defaulting to the likelihood of some scientific explanation that we just haven't discovered yet, and I find I must come against that natural tendency if I am to simply rejoice in this wondrous blessing that these beloved friends have received.
Besides this skepticism, what other responses do I sometimes see in myself or others?
Sometimes I can feel resentful over not receiving such a gift for a loved one or for myself, even as I know in my heart that my faith has never been as great as this young girl's is.
Sometimes I feel frustrated with myself for not having such a simple, trusting faith.
I've heard others express indignation that a supposed God would pour forth this sort miracle when there are so many great(er) and (more) desperate needs to be addressed throughout the world. What about people who experience great calamities, or who are stricken with terminal illnesses or debilitating conditions? And why can't a God who can miraculously restore a child's hearing do some sort of wonder that would convince us to stop hating and killing each other?
In short, there are a lot of responses other than the one that I need to have: humble awe at God's abundant love, and a desire for a faith that would allow it to flow unhindered in my life, too.
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