“Miracles” (at Samaria)

On Wednesday of last week I had the privilege of speaking at a Raleigh church (Samaria), and the feelings I had upon arriving there as well as upon heading home were almost identical to the feelings I had the very first time I ever stood up in front of a group and shared my story.  If I had to sum my feelings up in one word it’d probably be “wow.”  I could not have felt more welcome–and I was reminded by the people there that our stories down here are so very powerful, no matter what the details of them might be.   We were made to connect with one another, to share our respective storylines, and to hopefully figure out together that each and every one of our stories does indeed point back to the same story, God’s story–the One I feel most compelled to share.

I was privy to many storylines at Samaria.  One of the ladies in attendance, who is now dealing with a recurrence of cancer, just so happens to be a patient of the first oncologist I ever had.  Another woman there was diagnosed just before the holidays with the exact same type of cancer I was diagnosed with years ago, and she had multiple family members who drove in from different areas to be with her to hear me.  Another very young woman was there with a close family member (one of the ladies above) and is undergoing her own cancer scare, eagerly awaiting an appointment with a doctor who’ll address the alarming irregularities in her blood.  There was another woman grieving her beloved mother who passed on around the holidays and whose caretaker she had so very faithfully been.  There too was a new friend and “classmate” of mine who was emotional at times as she no doubt thought of her most vulnerable sister whose caretaker she is.  And these stories just barely scratch the surface of the day.

Before the event at Samaria, I found myself drawn to C.S. Lewis’ book Miracles, and I’ve been reading it on and off for about a week now.  At some point in this life down here, I believe most of us have found ourselves in situations that have made us yearn for a miracle–something that does indeed defy every “rule” of nature we’ve ever been exposed to, something that points to a “Super-nature” known fully only in a realm other than this one.  In Miracles Lewis writes, “There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion (“Man’s search for God!”) suddenly draw back.  Supposing we really found Him?  We never meant it to come to that!  Worse still, supposing He had found us?  So it is a sort of Rubicon.  One goes across; or not.  But if one does, there is no manner of security against miracles.  One may be in for anything.”  Once Christianity is embraced, I believe that belief in impossibilities is no longer optional but rather a mandate–no matter what we see behind us, all around us and in front of us.

I don’t think it’d be a stretch at all to say that our faith does not even exist apart from the miraculous–the birth of Jesus, his resurrection; and the Old and New Testament lists of the miraculous could and do go on and on.  Will the storylines of all the people I met at Samaria be miraculous?  Jesus did heal ten lepers around a place called “Samaria” long ago, and just a few words from him made each of them clean and whole (and, as a side note, only one of those lepers actually said “thanks”).  Well, regarding the stories of those at modern-day Samaria, yes, I do believe that their storylines are overflowing with the miraculous.  And I believe this because I saw and sensed their belief–their belief, in the midst of very trying storms, in a great and loving and powerful God.  Simultaneous suffering and steadfast belief in the only One who can relieve the suffering yet doesn’t always is to me quite miraculous indeed.  Jesus the Christ embodies this agonizing dynamic in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest and crucifixion.  Jesus, in those moments during which he sweat the blood he was born to later shed on our behalf, showed us that our God does indeed know and understand our hardest moments like no one else does.

In the words of Lewis once more, “If the ultimate Fact is not an abstraction but the living God, opaque by the very fullness of His blinding actuality, then He might do things.  He might work miracles.”  As Lewis states so much more eloquently than I, nothing is off the table, no matter how difficult things might seem.  If God’s who he says he is, then there’s truly nothing he cannot do.  As for our part, we can ask for whatever it is we need and we can believe that God will, in his own way and in his own time, indeed supply it.  And this Reality, this One very true Story, is what I most hope the people of Samaria, and any other individuals with whom I have shared my story, will hold onto with all they’ve got.