Here’s another thoughtful message from the pen of Reverend Mark Adams, Senior Pastor of the Redland Baptist Church in Rockville, Maryland, as recently shared with his congregation:
Albert Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if NOTHING is a miracle. The other is as if EVERYTHING is.”
If I were to ask if any of you had ever experienced a bona fide miracle, I’m guessing that … depending on your definition … most would say “no.” Let’s see if I can change your way of thinking.
In the time it takes for you to listen to one of my sermons, you inhale and exhale about 250 times. Since most of us don’t give breathing a second thought, let’s use something Mark Batterson, pastor of National Community Church, wrote to help us review the journey of one of the oxygen atoms you and I breathe in:
“It all begins when air passes through your nose, where unwanted dust and debris is filtered out. The average person moves about 440 cubic feet of air per day through the nose and trachea and into the lungs. The surface area of your lungs is forty times greater than the surface area of your body—compressed within the tiny space between your ribs. Once in the lungs, the oxygen atoms hitchhike with hemoglobin and travel throughout the entire human body via blood vessels. If those blood vessels were laid end to end they would be approximately 100,000 miles long. That means the blood vessels in your body could wrap around the equator four times. At the end of its journey, the oxygen atom enters individual cells, bonds with the food we eat and releases energy. In his article ‘The Miracle of Breath,’ James Robinson writes: ‘Webster’s Dictionary defines a miracle as “an extraordinary, unusual wonder or marvel.”’ Isn’t a bloodstream 100,000 miles long, in a small body, an unusual wonder? Isn’t the journey of an oxygen atom a true marvel? We don’t need supernatural events to experience a miracle. All we need is breath. The human breath is sacred. Cherish your breathing: it is the miraculous gift of life.”
Kind of takes your breath away doesn’t it!?
Acts 17:25 says that God “…gives all men life and breath.” Job 34:14–15 says that if God were to withdraw His breath from humankind, we would return to dust. The bottom line is this: every breath we take is a miracle of God. The average person takes approximately 23,000 breaths per day. That means you experience about 23,000 miracles every day!
We are surrounded by miracles, so we have a choice to make. As Einstein puts it, we can live as if nothing is a miracle or we can live as if everything is. I think it is more intelligent to choose the latter, for as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”
Think about it: if we could do that, if we could train ourselves to see God’s miracle-working power around us at all times, wouldn’t we be bolder disciples? If we learned to rest in the fact that God constantly does the miraculous, wouldn’t we experience more of the peace He promises?
© 2012 Mark Adams
In John’s Gospel, he references several miracles performed by Jesus during His three short years of ministry, and then comments in the next to last chapter, Chapter 20 … “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Why not take some time in the very new future to read this entire book of the Bible, written by one who knew the real Jesus likely better than anyone else who ever lived!
