The Miracle of the World – Sunday, March 06, 1983
With spring nearly here, we are constantly reminded that one of the joys of this world is its physical beauty: small and beautiful miracles such as the first green shoots sent up from bulbs too eager for spring to wait for the melting of the last snow, the pattern by which a window is glazed with frost, the new patterns by which frost melts beneath the sun. And such small, remarkable beauties are supported by the larger miracles of the physical universe: the constant harmony of sunrise and sunset, the movement of stars across a night sky I the very changing of the seasons themselves.
It has been said that if there was but one tree in all the world that had leaves, but one tree whose leaves turned to burnished copper and golden red in autumn, then all the world would make a pilgrimage to stand in awe before the miracle of it. But since so many trees are so beautiful, since this miracle is so common, we do not find precious the wonder in it.
As it is with nature, so it is with our lives. Our living is filled and made beautiful by the miraculous, by miracles so common that like the leaves on trees we see the splendor but do not recognize it: the power of the wounded body to be healed; the constancy of healing in a world of wounds; the love that makes all healing possible, all wounds bearable—the miracle of humanity.
We are the evidence of God, and our lives are the proof of His power. This is what we frequently overlook, what we do not take time to consider. And in our blindness to the miracles that abound in our living we sometimes come to an opposite conclusion: that life is not good, that God is not involved in our living, that He is not concerned with us.
But God does not forget us; we forget Him or ignore the attention of His constantly miraculous love in our lives.
Christ taught His apostles of His concern for us, and of our responsibility to God: “I am the door: by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.”
“I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.’.1
God has given us His Son and as testimony of His love and our hope, He has given us the spring, symbol of new life. Indeed, He has given us a world, all the beauties and miracles of which testify of Him, if we but have the ear to hear, the eye to see; if only we are prepared to enter in at the door of Christ, to know the Good Shepherd, to recognize and take comfort in the miracle and beauty of His love.
1 New Testament, John 10:9,11.
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March 06, 1983
Broadcast Number 2,794