Odd thing happened yesterday. I was at the store and picked up a book, Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, and started to read it. Ok, that’s not odd in and of itself. Heh.

This book states, unequivocally, what I meant about miracles. I know, I’ve beaten this horse to pieces. I don’t know what my sudden fascination with miracles is but it is…and now I’m pondering it.

“Let me say something about that word: miracle. For too long it’s been used to characterize things or events that, though pleasant, are entirely normal. Peeping chicks at Easter time, spring generally, a clear sunrise after an overcast week — a miracle, people say, as if they’ve been educated from greeting cards. I’m sorry, but nope. Such things are worth our notice every day of the week, but to call them miracles evaporates the strength of the word.

Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It’s true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave — now there’s a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time. When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth.

…

Swede said another thing, too, and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here’s what I saw. Here’s how it went. Make of it what you will.

…

I believe I was preserved, through those twelve airless minutes, in order to be a witness, and as a witness, let me say that a miracle is no cute thing but more like the swing of a sword.”

I think that sums it up nicely. I don’t know why miracles are affecting me in this way but I do want answers. Like SummerSong said, she’d want an answer to why something is happening the way it is. I’m the same way.

But I wonder…are there things out there that just happen without explanation?