The Miraculous and the Mundane

I have been talking about miracles and their place in the Christian tradition. But what about today? Do miracles still occur? Yes, they do. In fact, they probably occur much more frequently than we realize. Yet, most of us don't live in this realm of the miraculous. Instead, we live very much in the mundane. That is, we live in the very ordinary things of life.

In the Tradition of the Church, we observe a liturgical calendar. About half of the year we are focusing on some special event in the life of our Lord. Right now we are in the season of Advent, which is a preparation for Christmas. But the other half of the year is simply called Ordinary Time. There isn't anything spectacular happening. The Church recognizes that we live a good portion of our lives in ordinary time. This is the mundane. There isn't anything exciting going on.

What's important is that we maintain a miraculous faith in the midst of the mundane. That is, that we know that our God is great and capable of anything. We trust Him for everything. If we find ourselves in the middle of an impossible situation, we pray and trust God for His power. But even if things don't work out like we thought they would, it's still important that we trust Him. Faith is not getting God to do what we want, it is trusting Him to do what He knows is best. Sometimes that will mean the glory of the miraculous, but most of the time it will simply mean abiding in the mundane.

We glorify God in both of these places. When God works by His power to do the miraculous, we praise Him and give Him the glory for it. When He doesn't, we rejoice in Him always, being thankful for all things that He allows to come into our lives. We offer Him our meagre sufferings to be mixed with His own. In this way we are made more like Jesus. We are conformed to His sufferings that we might be more like Him in His glory someday.

I have known very little of the miraculous, and very much of the mundane. But I am slowly discovering more of the God of the miraculous in the midst of the mundane. As my eyes are open to Him in all His beauty, I find that whether miraculous or mundane, it is absolutely glorious to be living in communion with my Lord.