Miracles: God’s Personal Love Letters
Imagine you’ve fallen on hard times. You’ve been laid off from a good job, and for the first time in years it’s uncertain how your bills will get paid. At the kitchen table, buried under statements and notices, numbing despair begins to take hold. Several payments must go out today to cover this month if you’re to avoid a deeper hole of late fees, increased rates, and compounding interest. You’ve done the math, and the figure keeps knocking the wind out of you.
In recent weeks your initial determination to pray and hope for the best has steadily lost ground to doubt and a growing sense of isolated loneliness.
You stand up and walk to the mailbox, knowing it probably contains more bad news, additional evidence of your perilous predicament. It’s a beautiful day, but to you the world looks dull and gray, matching how you feel. Your whispered prayer is earnest and simple: Please help.
At first glance, today’s post looks like the usual: ads and invoices. Then beneath it all, you notice a handwritten, personally addressed envelope. The return address is from a treasured friend who moved away years ago. Contact has grown sporadic over time but is always a pleasant surprise.
She could know nothing of your present circumstance, yet the mere sight of the letter lifts your spirits. The note inside reads, “I’ve been thinking of you. I recently received an unexpected bonus at work. I don’t know why, but I felt compelled to send it to you. With love . . .”
A check falls from the last fold. It’s enough to cover your need to the penny.
Suddenly the sky grows brighter. Your heart feels lighter than it has in a long time. Wonderful! It’s a miracle! Just when the constricting circle around your life couldn’t seem any tighter, God arrives with reinforcements and relief. A smile breaks across your weary face. Then laughter wells up, a bubbling spring of thanksgiving.
Wonderful. Smile. Laughter. Miracle.
It is no accident that these words go together so naturally. The English word miracle originates in the Latin mirus, meaning “wonderful,” and the Greek meidan, meaning “to smile and laugh.” The Encarta Webster’s College Dictionary (2nd edition) dryly defines a miracle as “an event that appears to be contrary to the laws of nature and is regarded as an act of God.”
Oh, but as anyone who’s ever experienced one firsthand will tell you—and as the stories in these pages testify—a miracle is far, far more than that. A miracle is nothing less than receiving a personal love letter from God, an unmistakable reminder that we are neither alone nor abandoned. We are sought-after children, treasured and valued beyond measure.
In the theoretical scenario above—all too real for many of us—was the miracle in the money (spent and gone as soon as it came)? Or was it in the knowledge of being loved and provided for—a forever gift that adds to your reservoir of faith for the next hardship? We think the answer is obvious.
Again and again Scripture reminds us that God transcends nature’s laws and the physical world’s limitations. Over and over we’re reassured that he loves us each individually and always wants what is best for us. Whether or not we recognize his presence, he regularly intervenes in our lives. Amid our daily heartaches and hardships, we can cling to assurances like these:
As you read the amazing and extraordinary stories that follow, never forget who sent them, and take to heart the message emblazoned on every page: God loves you, cares for you, and provides for you—no matter how dire and desperate circumstances may seem.
In Miracles Are for Real, our previous book on this topic, we provided in-depth theological perspectives as well as wide-ranging explanations and theories. We went into detail to demonstrate that miracles do indeed still happen and sought to answer questions such as: Is there anything we can do to earn a miracle? Why do miracles happen to some people and not others? Can prayer produce a miracle?
Here, we let stories speak. The accounts that follow are told as accurately and authentically as possible—true stories about real people. No individual featured in these pages claims to have a saintly spiritual life, a hotline to heaven, or a surefire formula that prompted God to intervene. In fact, many told us, “I don’t know why God chose to perform a miracle in my life . . . I’m just so grateful he did!”
You might see yourself or your circumstances echoed in some of these stories. Possibly you or a loved one is facing a health crisis, job loss, desperate family troubles, or another heartbreaking hardship. May you find courage in how ordinary people have experienced God’s extraordinary provision when they’ve needed it most. And may you wait with confident expectation that God will soon send you too a personal love letter.