The Greatest of All Miracles – Sunday, November 04, 1984
Poet Robert Browning once wrote, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for.”
But, even if heaven is beyond our immediate reach, man’s “grasp” seems to have captured miracles: the bridges we have built; the towers we have made; the gleaming cities of our dreams; the inspiration of our arts and the instruction of our sciences. Our technologies transcend even those last limitations of space and time we had thought were impenetrable.
How tempting it is for us to admire our genius and to think the products of our labors are miraculous.
But where is the miracle in the bridges we built forty years ago that are now falling down? Where is the genius in the blackened cities that are now inhabitable? The apparent “miracles” we have made have proven to be less substantial or enduring than our pride.
And yet, there is a miracle in our lives. Not the apparent miracle of what we have made or acquired, but the real miracle of ourselves. “What is man,” the psalmist asked, “that thou art mindful of him?”1 The answer that we should feel in every fiber of our being is that “man is God’s.” As was that perfect man before us—Jesus Christ—we are the creation of God’s love, the fulfillment of God’s hope.
The temptation of what we have accomplished is to assume that we are no more than our accomplishments. But we are more. Not merely because there is a soul in us, not merely because that spark of humanity ignites a life that is eternal, but because, unlike bridges and cities that belong to man, man belongs to God.
So, it is not what we made that should be important to us, but what we are. Each of us is a child of God, a son or daughter in a celestial family that populates the wor1d. If we have built cities, if we have engineered bridges, if we have designed computers, then we are blessed—blessed to have shared in man’s intelligence, which is a gift and evidence of God.
This, then, is the hope and vision of the faithful: to look at towers and see not escape into ego but a reaching to God; to visit cities and be not impressed by man’s organization but reminded of that City of God from whence we have come and to which we shall return.
Yes, there are miracles in life, but not of man’s making. Miracles are the gift of God, and our lives are the greatest miracle of all.
1 Old Testament, Psalms 8:4
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November 04, 1984
Broadcast Number 2,881