Why didn’t I get my miracle?

God, are You there?

“I just might be the least qualified person to write about miracles,” writes author Erin Healy. “As far as I know I’ve never witnessed one, experienced one, or tried to debunk one. I’m no theologian, I have no hope of sainthood, and there’s a chance I’m so culturally conditioned to be cynical that I might not know a miracle if it strangled me by my cross-pendant necklace. I’ve even been known to use the term miracle a little too loosely. (There are so many other ways to explain an error-free fast-food order.) But here’s the thing: none of this has stopped me from desperately wanting a real, bona fide miracle now and then. I don’t think I’m alone.”

God, are You there?

“I suspect that most people who acknowledge the existence of God, even in this twenty-first century, have wished for a miracle of their own,” writes Healy. “A rescue. An escape. A healing. Because if this world is governed by a power greater than ourselves, then it stands to reason: God could intervene if he wanted to.”

Healy is an award-winning fiction editor who owns a consulting firm where she has worked with a wide variety of novelists, including Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker. She edited twelve of what she describes as “his heart-pounding stories” before their collaboration on Kiss, the first novel to seat her on “the other side of the desk” as an author. She has gone on to write The Baker's Wife, The Promises She Keeps and Never Let You Go.

“Miracles are good, right?” she writes. “And most of the time, we don’t even want them for ourselves, but for loved ones. So why does God so rarely grant the miracles we seek? Trying to answer this question can be a little bit like pounding on the doors of heaven and getting splinters in your fist.”

God, are You there?

Because what if tragedy isn’t always about judgment and miracles aren’t always about God’s favor? In other words, what if what happens in a life isn’t at all about me, or you, or him, or her? In June, a runaway fire in my hometown destroyed almost 400 houses while leaving many adjacent properties untouched. In July, a gunman walked into a theater in my state and opened fire on a crowd of people. To say (as some have) that those whose homes or lives were spared received a miracle is tantamount to saying that those who suffered were being judged. Such labeling presumes to know God’s intentions and our fellow humans’ stories. This can be damaging, and besides, it misses the point.