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It must have been 2001 still, not so long after the tragedies of 9/11, and I was at the mercy of my then hairdresser who was regaling me with a story. Brandishing sharp scissors she said, “You are a minister aren’t you? You’ll love this then. I just tear up every time I think of it. Have you heard about the man who was in World Trade Center and when the buildings collapsed he found himself straddling a girder? He rode that girder all the way to the ground, and survived! God saved him! What a miracle!”
A born skeptic, I muttered my doubts about the veracity of that account, keeping my wholly incredulous response to myself. What, I wondered, did God have against the three thousand who didn’t ride girders to safety? Didn’t they deserve miracles, too?
I read recently of an indigenous woman who was captured by Coronado on his march through Mexico into what became the southern states. In a stroke of luck, she escaped her captors. Unfortunately, she ran smack dab into Hernando de Soto who was trekking across from the Florida peninsula. Coronado and de Soto never encountered each other, but, one very unlucky woman managed to cross paths with both slave-hungry explorers. Was that a miracle?
The exclamation “What a miracle!” is reserved for extraordinary events we consider good news. Turning a blind eye to all coincidences that cause misery, we focus on stories of unlikely events that might serve the idea that some ‘good intentions’ undergird life on earth. Even more, it seems that people like to recount tales that suggest divine forces will single them out for special notice in times of need.
How might we live if we weren’t waiting for God to thrust a girder under us at just the right moment? I hope we would live in expectation of the little miracles, like the dedication of rescue workers who refused to give up looking for one more person trapped under the rubble, or the compassion that turns us aside from enslaving our sisters and brothers, and the hope that human hands outstretched in love will be miracle enough to elicit our praise and thanksgiving.
