It must begin with individuals - because the organisations are corrupted: the organisations (including the mainstream Christian churches) are the problem, not the answer.
It must therefore begin in the individual minds of people - that is the place where awakening is most difficult to prevent.
It must begin with some change in assumptions about the nature of reality - after that, experiences change their significance - which means that miracles can be acknowledged as miracles...
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A million miracles in a million minds - ten million! Not difficult, not unusual; in a sense it is happening already and is always happening - but until now people refuse to acknowledge the miraculous.
People have been sure that miracles cannot happen, and always explain-them-away on the basis of that prior conviction.
But once miracles are deemed possible; they will be noticed....
A million miracles every day - each personal, individual, each to awake, sustain or deepen faith.
Each miracle personal, individual, invisible - a million such, cumulatively unstoppable!
This is one of my problems with certain people defining miracles as rare events. It seems, rather as you say, that miracles are occurring everyday (as Christians often talk about these - what seems like divine coordination of events leading to highly unlikely outcomes), and (in aggregate) numbering in very high numbers. For example, if you have 7 billion people, and a miracle occurs on average to each person once a year (which based on conversations with Christians I think is a low estimate), then you have over 19 million miracles *per day*.
ReplyDelete@ajb - Indeed. It is a question of recognising them - which may depend on prayer. When a miracle is in response to prayer, it seems more likely to be noticed.
ReplyDeleteAt the end of his great prophecy of 1918, Steiner recommends reviewing each day for miracles:
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19181009p01.html
Seriously, get hold of Craig Keener's Miracles, two thick volumes published a few years ago. So confident is Dr. Keener that miracles happen today (which he documents for hundreds of pages), that he uses this fact as the basis for arguing that the New Testament accounts of miracles are plausible. The book is written in a concise, reasonable, non-breathless way. Highly recommended and very relevant to the topic of this posting.
ReplyDeleteIt is my (totally anecdotal) experience that people are talking more about miracles in their lives. It's possible I'm associating more with people who better recognize them, but that's not the only factor. People I've known for years are more free with sharing the miracles of their lives.
ReplyDelete@mistaben
ReplyDeleteI personally don't share my experience of miracles with anybody - except to say that I have experienced them, in response to prayers. They were, indeed, the final and decisive factor in my conversion.