Miracles Still Happen
December 23, 2022

I often come across a very pointed question:  does God still perform miracles in our day and age?  I mean, just the question arising can cast shadows of doubt on my fairly well-defined faith.  It often sends me into a mini crisis of my personal walk with God, and I have to (once again) examine my life to see if that is my current reality. 

Today that issue arose for me yet again.   As I arrived at my regular place of prayer, I pulled out an old prayer journal.  I flipped casually but thoughtfully through it.  It took only moments before I happened onto some pages I had journaled on about a talk my husband and I were asked to give at a women’s group.  I t was precisely on that topic:  does God still heal miraculously today?

I was asked to give that talk because I was able to recover from mental illness.  So, I began with that premise.  Some years ago, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia.  I was told by my psychiatrist I only had a 2% chance of ever functioning in society again.  It frightened me, and I began to cry out to God for help.  A few years later, that diagnosis was changed to schizoaffective disorder, because I was finally able to articulate my mental health experience to my care team.  And later still, my social worker therapist—who had a license in psychiatry—changed my diagnosis to post traumatic stress disorder and, after a year under his care, ok’d me to move out of state to repair a fractured relationship my mental illness had brought upon me.

I later was remarried after years of single living.  But my then husband contracted cancer and ended up passing away.  My family stood poised with baited breath to see if I would survive widowhood because my husband had watched ever so carefully over my life to protect me from any threats on my newly stabilized health.  I did survive, with the assistance of family and professionals—and clergy and church.

Today I am successfully married again—to a widower who prayed for a godly wife.  We have a beautiful home and I am very actively engaged in ministry in our church—with my husband—at my pastor’s request.  I send out homemade greeting cards to encourage any who find themselves stumbling through life.  I make dresses for little African girls.  And my husband and I help teach Sunday School to children.  That 2% chance of ever functioning in society again has skyrocketed!  In addition, my husband, my son, and I speak on a panel regularly at Crisis Intervention Trainings for law enforcement officers and first responders.  Is that a miracle or is it not?  You decide.

But…I have some other stories.  My son was born with a rare blood disease that mimicked leukemia.  His doctor told me when he was two weeks old that he would require blood transfusions within a decade in order to survive.  My church rallied around us in prayer on a Friday night prior to a blood sample being rushed to the University of Washington the following Monday for research.  That Monday, his blood sample came back—astonishingly—completely clean!  That night, he struggled with usual symptoms of breathing difficulties.  When I rushed into the nursery to help him struggle for breath, I saw two massive angels above the head of his crib keeping watch over him.  He never had another episode with losing his breath again.

When he was fourteen, his school principal called me to hurry to the school for a talk.  He told me my son had attacked his PE teacher and that I needed to prepare myself to accept that my son was a homosexual.  Today, in his forties, he has a beautiful marriage to the wife of his youth as well as three grown daughters and a little granddaughter who loves him to pieces.  Miracles?  Yes? No?  What say you?

About a year ago, my son came hobbling into church on crutches after an accident at work.  The evangelist prayed for him and he had the evangelist hold his crutches.  He hobbled in pain across the front of the church, then began to run, then took a huge leap.  His crutches remained at the altar as a testimony of God’s miraculous, healing touch.  Miracles today?  Who could deny it?  There are still others.  But they will keep for another day.