I confess I find it hard to believe in modern-day miracles. I suppose it’s because few of them happen to the people I know in real life. Trustworthy people with whom I have a personal relationship are more believable than the ones I read about.
I’m not saying miracles don’t happen, nor that they didn’t happen. The entirety of my faith hinges upon the greatest series of miracles leading to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These days, I subconsciously take the Jesus-works-in-subtle-ways road. As in, He’ll touch a heart here to send a check there and answer a prayer that way. As in, He’ll use someone’s pre-Christian experiences to minister to others in the best way, redeeming their past for the future He desires. Subtle.
But God isn’t always so subtle in his miracles even now, according to Eric Metaxas. In Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life, he explores the small and great, the old and the new in a variety of works of God which are deemed “miraculous.”
Metaxas writes with the non-believer and the theologian in mind. For those who say, “Life itself is a miracle,” he agrees and touches upon what makes it so. The first half of his book reads like a work by Lee Strobel, more in the vein of The Case for Creator or The Case for Christ. The rebuttals toward “the universe happened by chance” or “Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead” are familiar.
However, these arguments are a necessary foundation. Not only does he establish what a miracle is, but he also discusses what a miracle is supposed to achieve. Metaxas cannot do either without basing it on biblical narrative and analysis of miracles in scripture.
The second half of the book is divided into sections. Each section contains several stories of a type of miracle. The type of miracle is defined in a forward covering each separate section. Anything from miraculous healing to a staunch non-believer turning to Christianity in a conversion miracle to encountering angels obvious and angels disguised. It is a trove of anecdotes very much like those found in a Chicken Soup series book.
Overall, it is a solid exploration which left me with a lot to consider.
Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life was written by Eric Metaxas, published and reprinted by Penguin Books on October 13, 2015 and it contains 352 pages.
Elk Writer 