“Do you believe in MIRACLES?” was the cover and headline for the Sunday Parade magazine last weekend.  It was the story of a Texas girl who had amazingly survived a 30-foot fall into a hollow cottonwood tree.  Her head-first fall and subsequent hours inside the tree resulted in just some minor bumps and bruises and possible concussion.  If that wasn’t amazing and relieving enough, her Mom noticed in the following days and weeks that her daughter’s serious digestive disorders, diagnosed four years earlier, had seemed to disappear!  A Pew Research Center study found that 8 in 10 Americans believe in miracles, even more than half who are unaffiliated with any particular faith.  Author Marianne Williamson and teacher of  A Course in Miracles says, “People know there’s more going on in this life than just what the physical eyes can see.”

And yet, miracles are in front of our eyes wherever we look, if we really take the time to see.

We are afforded this miracle every Spring as we leave the dormancy of Winter.  In less than two months’ time, our fern garden will go from this…

to this….

Purple raspberry canes will be producing raspberries in four months…

Hosta stalks in the snow will transform to huge green plants that flower at the peak of summer.

An empty nest may be re-used or re-built for a family of yellow warblers by the middle of summer…

And all of this and so much more occurs without intervention of any kind! 

Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of Nature.  —C. S. Lewis

Spring is a miracle!  It is easy to see.  Every aspect of Nature–in all seasons–is a miraculous occurrence.  And in this busy, technical, seemingly money- and people-controlled world, Nature just does its own thing.  It doesn’t need our help, or permission, or belief.  The Texas Mom responds to naysayers who don’t believe her story, “I don’t feel like I have anything to prove.  The proof is right there.  We lived it.”  So the question “Do you believe in miracles?” is rather a moot point.  Miracles happen.    

“Do you believe in Miracles?” in the March 13, 2016 Parade magazine by Katy Koontz