DUBIOUS ABOUT MIRACLES

We are so comfortable with the mundane, that we do not anticipate anything supernatural. We are theoreticians, academics. We state a belief in the phenomenal God for whom nothing is impossible, but we expect nothing beyond the routine as the consequence of our prayers. We believe He can, but we don't believe he will. Ours is a virtual reality. It's a pretense to trust. We ask for so little. We petition using banalities, truisms and clichés because we lack confidence in God, to ask boldly. "We" means all whose faith identity is Christian, Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox branches, whether denominational, undenominational, non denominational. We are a jaded bunch of professors, who make excuses for God. We are doctrinally dogmatic and practically agnostic.

Admittedly, I am overstating my case, painting this portrait with a broad brush. The subject is a Bride, whom I could paint precisely like DaVinci painted Mona Lisa, but my work here looks like an abnormally featured Picasso. We determine not to be identified with wing-nuts who charm snakes, and fake healings so we treat the miraculous as unscientific and irrational. Trying to insure that we are perceived as sane, we have placed ourselves in straight-jackets. Of course we should acknowledge our doubts or inability to understand everything about God, but surely we do not have to be cynical, contemptuous, disparaging, and suspicious of a God who can do very much more than all that we ask or even imagine.

A SUPER NATURAL BABY FOR MARY

Mary and Jesus by Ron Unruh, 2011

Luke 1:32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."

What immediately comes to my mind is the divine sovereignty of the baby who will be born to this unwed virgin woman, a girl really, to whom the angel Gabriel announced this unprecedented, never to be repeated event. Her name is Mary and God's Holy Spirit, who hovered over the waters at creation, will come upon her, overshadow her really, and when he does, conception will occur, immaculate to say the least, impeccable, flawless, faultless, without a trace of sexuality, simply divine origination, the Word becoming flesh. The Word, who spoke and without whom nothing was created that was created, became a human being to grow up and to live among our kind. He became part of our history. His name would be called Jesus. Without sin of any kind in word, deed or even thought, he, the Son of God, entered earth's population in order to be put to death in a most public manner, not for the purpose of exacting human justice, but for the inexplicable purpose of atoning for human sinners' sins. God gave his Son. Everyone who believes in the Son receives not only forgiveness but life in the name of Jesus. Life that will transcend this life and thereafter to live forever with the Father, just as Jesus himself does now. And even when he was here, Jesus encouraged us to call his Father, our Father. Christ's kingdom will be forever, the angel told Mary, and the Bible instructs us that this kingdom is now, already, here in us, over us, around us. It's a secure place in which by faith we live while within the cultures of this world we serve as kingdom lights and kingdom salt. We help people see and taste that the LORD Jesus was the visible image of the invisible God when he was here and that he is presently the one who will gather us home where there is in store for us more than our minds can imagine. In the meantime, he is able to do for us very much more than everything that we may ask of him. 

GLORY IS THE GOAL

Defeat of Rebel Angels by Pieter Breugal Sr

At a time before time, a cadre of angels perpetrated a rebellion against God and while it was an unsuccessful coup, the rebel group spun off to infect others. In the broad window of pre-history God determined to create humanity and the world in which humankind would live. The original design and creation was perfectly achieved by the command of eternal God and time began. Humanity bore God's likeness in goodness and innocence. Humanity's participation in God's life and glory was the pre-eternal plan of God. For the briefest of moments there was intimacy between God and the first humans until the supernatural dissidents who had been evicted from God's presence, infected humankind. The faultlessness of the human species was soiled by personal sin that went viral. From that earliest time until now, the disabling effects of sin have dishonored the human story. This was not unforeseen and God did not react to that infiltration of wickedness as if surprised by it. Rather, since pre-eternity is that state of being from which God views all time, past, present and future as the same moment, He simply did what he intended to do. God elected to rescue fallen man through the incarnation and substitutionary atonement by God's Son who came supernaturally and then returned to the glory of his Father’s person. Since sin is viewed as personal liability, only individual faith in Christ's work that leads to salvation will be effective to regenerate a sinful person. Yet that person recreated and lived in by God's own Spirit, the second person of the trio of divine persons, lives with the assurance of entering the glory where God dwells beyond time. Glory is the goal toward which the whole story of redeemed humanity is moving.