Believe

When I was pregnant with each of my children, I began noticing a strange phenomenon happening around me. Suddenly, pregnant people were EVERYWHERE. In the market, post office, church, the park, the zoo, and even COSTCO ~ huge numbers of random women were pregnant all around me, somehow. It was as though I had developed acute pregnancy radar and it was on serious overdrive.

Was it a Mulder & Scully moment of unexplained random mass pregnancy within my general zip code? Likely not. My being pregnant was all-encompassing, and the most intensely miraculous and incredible experience I had ever journeyed through. Once my belly began humming with burgeoning life not my own I was granted this most awesome of bonuses: the awakened sense to notice other pregnant women where I would not have before. Suddenly, we were all sharing a delicious secret together ~ this most amazing phenomenon of harboring life within our variously lumpy bellies. I delighted in this newfound revelry of my eyes being newly opened to the sheer volume of pregnancies around me.

Because I was also pregnant, I was able to perceive and share the joy in lots of other people's pregnancies that otherwise would have passed me by unnoticed.

So it is with miracles and faith in our lives. The more we open our hearts, eyes, mind, and lives to God and to miracles ~ in essence, the more we BELIEVE, the more our lives are flooded with evidence, truth, and credence to the reality we have come to adopt by taking that scary initial leap of faith into a new understanding.

I sat in my church pew this morning, just silently weeping out of overflowing joy in recognition of the miracles taking place in the lives of others around me. In awareness of the power of God to work miracles, great and small, by faith alone.

The newly married couple who, after years of trying to conceive, is finally, joyfully pregnant.

The divorced woman who was loved and welcomed by our meek fellowship and is now celebrating the second year of new marriage to her new husband, a devout man of humble, abiding faith.

The family whose house was destroyed by fire, is now rebuilding and is being housed, clothed, and fed by members in the church until they can go home again.

The elderly man with a walking cane who was aided from his car to the chapel by a young woman who did not know him but loved him anyway because she saw the need.

The grandparents who bring their seven year old grandson to church every Sunday finally able to hear his voice beginning to sing the familiar music, as his life altering speech impediment is being triumphed over at last.

While singing with the worship team, my eyes floated over the crowd of people gathered in the chapel. I lingered for a few minutes on two boys ~ brothers ~ each looking to be about 12 or 14 years old. I had seen these boys arrive at church with their parents just moments before, both with wavy wet hair, surfboards strung atop their of their SUV. They stood in the chapel, ensconced in early morning fog, at 8:00 am on a Sunday morning with their parents, singing praise and worship music with all their hearts, souls, and might. No pretense, no agendas, seemingly no concerns about the ever-powerful pubescent sense of appearance: rather, they just stood there. They humbly and totally were just singing with their eyes closed in reflective reverence and their hearts poured into worshipping the Lord of Heaven and Earth.

They were the evidence of God's miracles happening around us. And the critical role of faith: to flick on the light switch so we can see what had once been glossed over or shrouded in darkness.

The powerfully moving image of those two boys praising God caught me somewhere about mid-sternum, and tears sprang. Two adolescent brothers praising God with innocent abandon in a humble chapel on an early Sunday morning. Right ON.

This might not strike anyone else as a miracle. But my eyes are opened wide and I see the power of God at work. With so many of our teens lost to such immorality or passive relativism ~ lost souls adrift ~ hope is alive. And it is strong. Miracles are still happening. But you have to want to acknowledge and celebrate them, want to see them, want to be aware on another level. Because I share a faith in God and the power to believe with these people, I am blessed to play firsthand audience to more and more of the everyday miracles happening around me. My eyes are opening and my heart softening to an increasing amount of God's work in the lives of others as He pours more sweat equity into me and more of my selfishness and ego is chipped away in the process.

I believe.

Because I responded to Christ's call love and grace for me and took the leap of faith into His arms, the evidence of His power, divinity, light, and actively working hand in the lives of others around me has been exponentially revealed.

Suddenly, I am seeing pregnant people again. Only instead of the miracle of life, I am witnessing the miracles IN our lives. My heart has been opened to the miracles of God around me, amplifying the stellar reality within me. God lives, He loves, and He reigns. He is at work everyday withint the lives in the people around us. Because I am awakened to their presence, my soul is being impacted and my socks are being rocked by the life-altering miracles of God happening formidably in our midst.

I believe.