What
Does a Miracle Look Like?
By Lisa Boyer
“Ask and it will be
given you”
Matthew
7:7a (NIV)
Several
years ago, we prayed for a miracle…we needed a miracle. My sister Shirley had
gallbladder cancer and the outlook for her stage of cancer was grim.
Statistically, she had no more than 18 months to live. She’d already lost over
20 pounds in less than two months and now she couldn’t eat much at all before
“feeling full.” She was wasting away to nothing in a hurry!
We
thought we had a miracle when she met with one of the best gallbladder
specialists in the country, but for reasons he never explained, he passed her
case off to someone else…who then passed it off to someone else. By the time
the surgery was scheduled, we were down to someone “willing” to take her case.
Obviously not the miracle we were praying for.
Her
tumor was the size of a football and we would have loved to have a stunned
surgeon come running out of the operating room shouting, “It’s a miracle, the
tumor is gone!!” But he didn’t…instead, he came out of surgery and said, “Well,
I bought her some time.”
A
miraculous recovery after the surgery would have been awesome! But rather than
the seven days she was told she’d be in the hospital, she was there for 20. It
seemed that everything that could go wrong did.
We
would have welcomed any miracle during her radiation and chemotherapy
treatments, but instead she was pale, thin and tired.
Where
was our miracle? Had it truly been the “time” the surgeon had bought? And could
that be considered a miracle if that extra time was spent getting radiation and
chemotherapy treatments?
I’m
sure there was plenty that God was doing that we didn’t see, but if it were truly
a miracle, wouldn’t it be huge and noticeable to everyone? After all, isn’t
that what a miracle looks like?
Not
always.
There’s
our annual family campout where I spent a weekend with 23 family members. It
was unremarkable as far campouts go…food, swimming, rain, leaky tents,
campfires, card games and laughter.
Nothing
was out of the ordinary, so I almost didn’t notice the miracle…Shirley was
there! It had been 66 months since her surgery and she was still with us. And
not just with us, she looked great, had gained weight and had more energy than
I did! Bottom line, she was healthy and that is nothing short of a miracle from
God. He answered our prayers…in His time and in His way.
GOING
DEEPER:
1.
Look around. Are there miracles you have missed because they didn’t come in
expected ways?
2.
If God hasn’t answered your prayers in the way you thought He should, will you
trust Him and thank Him anyway?
FURTHER
READING:
Lisa has been
married to Ted for more than 20 years and they have two teenage sons. Lisa
administers Fresh Start’s Facebook and blog, and loves hanging out with and
impacting teenage girls for Christ.
