The other day, my 14 year-old niece Nicole came by to interview me for a report she is doing at school. Her report is on “miracles” (pretty cool that in a public school you can do a report about miracles!). She wanted to ask me, as a former
seminary teacher what I thought were some common misconceptions people had about miracles.
I thought for a moment and listed a few that came to mind – sometimes we think miracles will always happen in the moment that we ask for them, sometimes we don’t understand God does not always perform the miracle that we want performed, and sometimes we aren’t willing to do our part to exercise our faith to see the miracle happen.
Nicole dutifully wrote down my answers, and then asked, “What miracles have you seen in your life?”
Before I could respond, my six-year-old daughter spoke up. “I’ve seen miracles,” she said. “I lost one of my ponies [a “My Little Pony”] and I prayed to know where it was. After my prayer, I found it.”
I’ve thought a lot about my daughter’s comment. It seemed to contradict in some ways what I had just said. True, she had exercised faith by praying and looking for her pony, but in this case the miracle did happen in the moment the she asked for it, and God did perform the miracle that she wanted performed. I thought of one of the miracles of the Savior that also fit this pattern:
And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him (Luke 5:13-14).
Now it’s clear that all miracles don’t come “immediately” in exactly the way we want. I have appreciated this quote from Elder Richard G. Scott:
“With even your strongest faith, God will not always reward you immediately according to your desires. Rather, God will respond with what in His eternal plan is best for you, when it will yield the greatest advantage. Be thankful that sometimes
God lets you struggle for a long time before that answer comes. That causes your faith to increase and your character to grow” (Ensign, November 2010).
But my daughter’s quick reply to the question, “Have you seen a miracle?” reminded me that today is a day of miracles. I started thinking of the many miracles that I have seen – getting to meet my wife, the fact that she was persuaded to marry me, finding our first home (our 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th homes have all been miracles too!), opportunities we have had to share the gospel … we have seen so many miracles!
In fact as I thought about the many miracles I have seen, I decided I needed to call my niece and let her know that I had thought of one other common misconception about miracles – that we (by which I mean “I”) sometimes don’t recognize the many miracles that God performs in our lives.
Today is a day of miracles. The Savior has said, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23).
What miracles have you seen in your life?
