Minor miracles
I've always been one to scribble stuff on random bits of paper and then forget all about them - and lose the paper, to boot.
Today I was looking for something entirely different when I chanced upon one of those scribbles. It made me think.
- Elisha asked, "Where did it fall?" and threw a stick in, causing the iron to float.
It is interesting because you hardly ever think of a miracle in such an everyday-minor-mishap kind of context.
(Jesus healing Peter's mother)
Elisha simply asked him, "Where did it fall?" Then he cut a stick and threw it in the water, making the iron axehead float so that the man could scoop it out.
It was a miracle. Aren't miracles supposed to be big things like causing the blind to see, the lame to walk, the dumb to speak and the deaf to hear? Or raising people from the dead? Or multiplying five loaves and two fish to feed five thousand people?
But making an axehead float??!
OK, it was a lost, borrowed axehead. But, still - !
It was simply a minor mishap, something God would hardly deem worth a miracle, I'd have thought. Don't we lose things all the time? (Or is it just me? *grin*) Call it what you want - I've misplaced my mobile phone at least once and forgotten where I've left my house keys quite a few times. It's a pretty common thing, something I think we just take as part of life and don't even give a second thought. When it happens, I sigh over my absent-mindedness, but I don't berate myself too much.
That day, God worked a small miracle just for that man. It didn't improve the quality of his life (restore sight/mobility/hearing etc.), it wasn't something spectacular, it was just a small miracle; but it made a world of difference to that man at that specific moment.
Which brings me to the account of Jesus healing Peter's mother-in-law of a fever. He went to visit Peter, found Peter's mother-in-law in bed with a fever, and healed her. Just like that.
Think about it: a fever. Such a common illness, I'm not sure we even think of it as an "illness" at all.
Yet Jesus cared enough to heal her of a fever. Not terrible diarrhoea, not leprosy, not a tumour, but just a simple fever. Again, something you'd hardly think worth a miracle.
I think, quite possibly, these two accounts are in the Bible to demonstrate that God cares. He cares for you and I as individuals, and He cares about the things that affect us. Even if they are minor, everyday things-of-the-moment. Even if we think they are not worth His attention.
He cares, and He cares enough to work minor miracles just for you and me.
Look out for them.