Miracles.

The word draws us and creates mystery and a bit or a lot of awe in most. We long for miracles and often, just hearing of miracles renews our hopes and captures our attention again.

I’ve read of many miracles, beginning with so many in the Bible. Some believe those kinds of miracles disappeared with the days of the disciples and apostles.

I don’t. I believe miracles are still here — as long as we believe in a miracle-working God and his indwelling Spirit in his children.

However, I’ve never witnessed a body of water split for a dry walk-through, and I’ve never had my spiritual eyes opened enough to see an army of angels encircling me. I’ve never watched anyone walk on water or heard and seen a single command turn a stormy sea into a glass-top surface. I would have been mesmerized to see thick clouds fall over a mountain and hear God’s voice boom through the darkness, and to actually see the sun stand still would have been beyond my comprehension — but oh how I would have been an eager spectator.

Yet, when I stop and consider miracles, I realize they are all around me — so many that I just take for granted. Gravity isn’t a subject that takes up any of my thinking space, but it’s a constant miracle in my life. Without gravity, I would float off into space along with anything or anyone that wasn’t tied down.

Our universe is measured in billions, and there are galaxies that are so distant, a telescope has never come near them — and yet, here on planet Earth humans live and function daily — on the only life inhabited planet that’s known.

Even the animal kingdom is a network of the miraculous. Birds annually fly thousands of miles to migrate to warmer climates and then find their way back to their original location without any gadgets or road signs. When the hummingbirds return to my summer feeders, I never consider the miracles of their nonstop flights of up to 500 miles in a single day.

It’s obvious that the scientific world can write volumes on the unexplainable and the hypothetical, but when I consider everyday miracles, I run out of brain space. The ability to see a rose in bloom and smell its fragrance, to be immediately sensitive to the touch of hot and cold, to hear sounds and have a brain to transmit their origin and meaning, to need sleep and stay in that mode for hours each 24-hour cycle, to be able to satisfy hunger with food.

The list could be endless. Scientists continue to find unexplained miracles operating in the human body. So many of these scientists spend their lives in attempting to find a “how,” “where” or “why” to our universe and its occupants. I’m extremely grateful that God opened my spiritual eyes to his creation and miracles and gave me faith to believe in four simple words: “In the beginning God …”

Letters to Camille Anding can be sent to P.O. Box 551, Brookhaven, MS, 39602, or e-mailed to camille@datalane.net.