Search for News by Title

01/02/2010 Richard's Ramblings - February 2010

Modern-day miracles do happen — it’s hard to believe that, weeks after the Haitian earthquake, people were still being found alive in amongst the rubble. In Australia we would sometimes hear incredible stories of people surviving the hardship of being lost in the desolate outback. At the other end of the spectrum of human activity, the vividness of pictures of drivers walking alive from crashed Formula One cars that lie in absolute ruin defies imagination, despite the millions that go into designing safe cars.

I think there are two kinds of miracles. Firstly those which despite all the planning in the world bring about a result such as the type typified in Formula One Crashes - a result planned for, prepared for and hoped for, yet most often not realised because it goes against all odds. The second type of miracle is the one which cannot be planned for in any way, which has no logical explanation and which baffles our understanding of the world and the way it functions.

I am convinced that both kinds of miracles do happen.

Whether it’s a physical healing that defies medical science, a radical change in a person’s personality to the extent that it is fundamentally unbelievable, yet it’s happened, or whether it’s a subtle yet definite transformation that has lasting impact, miracles which defy logic do happen.

I don’t find the idea of these kinds of miracles all that strange really. After all, there is so much that we don’t understand about how our universe works. Two hundred years ago leading scholars thought their hypotheses were pretty good, a hundred years ago the ideas had changed dramatically, now we see things through entirely different eyes. What will our understanding be in one hundred years time? Some of today’s inexplicable miracles will be understood....and yet the inexplicable will still be there...

It’s a remarkable world and universe in which we live. Remarkably structured and organised. Listen to the Astro-physicists — those physicists who study the big picture of the universe — and you will hear many of them pointing toward some greater intelligence that has been indispensable in bringing the depth of order and beauty to the world as we know it.

Remarkable intelligence!!

Remarkable God?

Rev Richard Johnston
February 2010

back to list