“I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?" - Jeremiah 32:27The world likes to dismiss magical situations and miracles as happy coincidences or only the product of mundane happenings. I'd like to suggest that real magic isn't Harry Potter, wands, cauldrons, and werewolves gathering with vampires to defeat ancient evils. (Side note: As you can tell, I read too many fantasy novels.)
The fact of the matter is, pre-enlightenment (fairly recent history, started around 1700's) people viewed magic and miracles as commonplace and expected. Part of this is obviously because science, as we know it today, didn't exist, and most common people filled in the gaps of their knowledge with superstition.
Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; - 1 Timothy 4:7
Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. - Colossians 2:18-23
If over-belief in magic and mundane were on two separate ends of a pendulum, the world would've seen a significant swing from magic to mundane during the enlightenment. In my opinion, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Although we have a brain, given by God Himself, to use and experience the world around you, we have a spirit which sees the unseen, not yet perceptible by scientific means.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. - 2 Corinthians 4:18
The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. - 1 Corinthians 2:14
The unseen forces of God move around us always, and we as Children of God, can sometimes see them if God wants. It's unlikely we'll have such a dramatic eye-opening miracle as Elisha's servant:
When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early in the morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. So he asked Elisha, “Oh, my master, what are we to do?”
“Do not be afraid,” Elisha answered, “for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”
Then Elisha prayed, “O LORD, please open his eyes that he may see.”
And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw that the hills were full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. - 2 Kings 6:15-17
Angels and their chariots were there to defend them against the Arameans, who surrounded their city by night and outnumbered them. Almost every book of the Bible speaks of miracles and magical or nearly-magical situations. Yet, do you see them nowadays?
I'll venture to say that few people saw the dramatic miracles that occurred in the Bible, and if anyone saw something like that today, they would dismiss it as either made up or explain it away with hypothetical reasoning.
As an aside, science has explained so much that would have been otherwise feared and cured diseases and injuries that would have otherwise killed millions. There's too much good in science to not see it as a manifestation of God using man to bless the world.
However, it is, like humanity, limited in its abilities to see and explain God and all He does. A few things science is still trying to figure out: The purpose of dreams, the possibility of life on other planets, the human brain, the depths of the oceans and the life that teems there, the true beginning (like pre-big bang) of life as we know it, time itself, and they're still working on discovering and cataloging all the living species of Earth (they made good progress on mammals, though). In reality, science is in it's infancy, and as it advances, we will understand more and more.
However, it will never explain everything concerning God, and it can only reveal what God wants revealed.
Do you know what science has revealed about God, though? Have you ever seen atoms that make up the world? They are like mini-solar systems, complete with a center star composed of protons and neutrons and swirling, circling planets called electrons. We are made of innumerable atoms. They hold small charges of negative and positive, an act of balance and order in the smallest known particle. Have you seen new-born stars or the death of suns? Have you experienced the birth of a child, a small human complete with toes and fingers, a heart, a brain, a soul tucked behind glittering eyes? I need to add something from Job that is beautiful about God's magic.
Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:Understand that He exists beyond our imaginations and senses. Equally, understand that He is also your Father and the Spirit within you. Now, understand that you are made limitless through Him.
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?
“Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?
“Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?
The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
its features stand out like those of a garment.
The wicked are denied their light,
and their upraised arm is broken.
“Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?
Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.
“What is the way to the abode of light?
And where does darkness reside?
Can you take them to their places?
Do you know the paths to their dwellings?
Surely you know, for you were already born!
You have lived so many years!
“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
or seen the storehouses of the hail,
which I reserve for times of trouble,
for days of war and battle?
What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,
or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?
Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,
to water a land where no one lives,
an uninhabited desert,
to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass?
Does the rain have a father?
Who fathers the drops of dew?
From whose womb comes the ice?
Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
when the waters become hard as stone,
when the surface of the deep is frozen?
“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades?
Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons
or lead out the Bear with its cubs?
Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?
“Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and cover yourself with a flood of water?
Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?
Who gives the ibis wisdom
or gives the rooster understanding?
Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?
Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens
when the dust becomes hard
and the clods of earth stick together? - Job 38-41
He is the one you praise; he is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes. - Deuteronomy 10:21
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” - Matthew 19:26
Do you believe in a God of infinite possibilities, or do you limit Him to only what our human minds can understand?
“But if I were you, I would appeal to God; I would lay my cause before him. He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted. - Job 5:8-9
"‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.” - Mark 9:23
He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” - Matthew 17:20
A lot of what science explains away as rational is also magical and a miracle in and of itself. God is very real. He's not just some puff of smoke that floats above the cloud tops. He sent His son to show us that He can be touched, heard, and smelled. He is more real than we are.
If you know me, you know our large Hackberry tree fell in our yard a week ago. It's been leaning toward the house for awhile, since it grew that way. On the day it fell, there was only a 15 minute period when no one was home and when most of our vehicles were out of the yard, and this is when the tree decided to fall. Somehow, it fell mostly away from the house, only causing minor damage to part of the porch, falling around the car that was there, only denting a grill almost underneath it. The only real damage it caused was tearing down a portion of the electric and cable lines, which was all back up within the next day.
I've been worrying about that tree falling for awhile, but it never was the "right" time to get it cut down. Now, I won't have to worry about that tree anymore, and we'll have more firewood for the winter.
Does this seem like a miracle? Does it seem magical? Does it look like an act of God? To many unbelievers, absolutely not. It was lucky, they might say, that it worked out that way, but pure chance. Yet, the Holy Spirit points out to me the maze of "coincidences" that occurred to make this work out so well. It whispers that although I need to take care of risks in the future, I never need to worry about anything because God holds us all in His hands.
Sometimes, miracles don't look like happy circumstances from the outside.
When Lot and his family were pressured to leave Sodom, they probably weren't overjoyed. This was there life, their livelihood, friends, and they had to leave it all behind. Yet, there was a reason God needed to destroy it, and He saved their lives despite His plans.
Sometimes, miracles don't look dramatic.
It's the slow but steady healing of an ill person, it's a hug when you need it most, and sometimes, it's something so minute, that we don't see the end result that was ordained.
Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." - John 20:29
Magic is simply the unexplainable. Miracles are when the unexplainable works out in our favor. God is the unexplainable.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. - Ephesians 3:20-21
