The Miracle

Do not pray for easy lives, pray to be stronger men.  Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers, pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work will be no miracle, but YOU shall be the miracle.

~Phillips Brooks

That elusive word. Healing. 

How often do we pray for it, long for that miracle, that touch from God’s hand that so assures us he is real, he loves us, hasn’t forgotten or rejected us. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick."

So how do we live without our deepest longings fulfilled? 

We give them to God. Pray that he will use them and be glorified through them—whether he changes them,
fulfills them or leaves them as they are—longings, unfulfilled.

What can God do with brokenness, with emptiness? 

We say we believe God can do more through them than through our strengths, and yet none of us want pain and suffering. Why not? Why, if God can do more through our trials and troubles would we not embrace them, not welcome them as if welcoming the very presence of God? Come, God, and work through me—do what I alone cannot do.

We long for the eradication of pain, and not wrongfully so. But perhaps sometimes we are so focused on making that our goal that we miss the gentle whisper when God visits. The gentle whisper Elijah heard on Mt. Horeb when he was filled with fear for his life and a world of hurt, wondering if anyone else was left who loved the Lord.

Perhaps you’ve lived through the storm, the earthquake, the rumblings and terror, and God has been in none of them—but have you waited for the whisper? Listened for it, knowing it’s coming? He will come.

Maybe if God is not changing our circumstances, He wants to change us instead. 

Maybe he is calling us to be the miracle.

See also Stories of Hope

Invisible Illness Week is coming up

Next week is National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week.  Check out this free, online virtual conference, September 10-14, sponsored by Rest Ministries.  (By the way Rest Ministries is a wonderful Christian organization with an online magazine, message board, and tons of helpful information).

This year's theme is "Invisible Illness?  Share your Visible Hope!"  Check out the speakers and topics for the week, or upload a picture of something that gives you hope and reminds you that life is worth living.  If you attend the conference and find encouragement, I'd love to hear about it.

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