I Saw a Miracle 

I saw a miracle.

If you have a cell phone, then you know the noise it makes when a text message arrives. My phone buzzed, so I glanced at it expecting to see a text message. I wasn’t expecting what I saw. Rather than text, it was several images. They weren’t images of beautiful hills or sunrises. Instead, they were images of the exquisitely formed face of our grand baby who is due to be born in the next few days.

It was a miracle because I was looking at the image of a child on the inside of my precious daughter-in-law. (not the photo here.) Our grand baby is fully alive and well. But soon, he or she will experience something that will most certainly be traumatic for him/her- the birth process. The baby, with his/her wonderfully designed brain will not be thinking, “What a blessing!” He/she will not be thinking, “I’m so grateful for this experience. It’s wonderful that it’s happening to me.” The baby won’t be thinking, “I’m grateful for this moment.” Rather, the baby will be enduring a process that is inevitable, being birthed into a new grand world unlike anything he/she’s experienced. The rest of life will be him/her encountering new experiences. The process will never stop. It will continue until death, when all of us go through another “birth canal” into eternity. As I ponder this miracle, two questions arise:

Question 1: How Am I Responding to Life’s Formative Situations?

I assume if you’re reading this faith column that you have faith in God or you’re exploring the possibility. That’s wonderful! I firmly believe it takes more faith to NOT believe in God and His miracle of creation and new life than it takes to believe IN Him. Thirty-seven trillion cells coming together to form our marvelous body is but one of many proofs of a divine Creator.

So, we’re born. How do we respond to the continuation of our development? Do we complain about every single problem? Do we worry when faced with new situations that test our spiritual muscles? Do we look at the proverbial glass as half empty?  Or, do we understand that when we reach physical adulthood, our spiritual formation doesn’t stop? Rather, God continues to mold and shape us. Into what or whom? Into the image of His beloved Son. Isn’t that exciting?

When we realize that we are new creations in Christ and are being divinely and wondrously formed for eternity, it gives us a new perspective.

Question 2: What Am I Doing with the Life God Has Given Me?

Do you or have you ever asked, “What am I on earth for?” Most of us have a sense of a divinely driven purpose. Some people are called to be educators. Others to sales. Some to exploration. Or to be engineers, homemakers, pilots, mechanics, bakers, or surgeons. What a beautiful world we live in where people thrive in their calling. But, many work simply for a pay check. Whether we’re a CPA because we love finance or we’re a tentmaker like the apostle Paul, our greatest fulfillment isn’t in temporal jobs, but rather in the work we do that lasts for eternity in God’s kingdom.

Birth is a miracle. Spiritual birth is a miracle. To what degree are we cooperating with God’s spiritual formation of us before we’re delivered through the death canal into His glorious arms?

“For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren,” Romans 8:29.

Heavenly Father, thank You for the gift of spiritual birth that is an even greater miracle than physical birth. May we come full term with what You are doing in our lives as You prepare us for eternity.