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Miracles

Christmas Themed Theological Riff Fest

December 10, 2021 by Matt Hill Leave a Comment

It’s the holiday season. A time for friends, family, food, traditions…. and riffing on complex and controversial Christmas themed theological topics!

In this episode of the Your Sunday Drive podcast, we’re joined by Levi Goodwin – local purveyor of fine viewpoints – for discussion on a range of topics related to Christmas and Advent: The incarnation, angels, Marian doctrines, miracles and more.

We also take time to examine the question of “When is it essential to have a firm opinion on a specific doctrine or topic?” and share some Holiday Hot Takes 🙂

Come along for Your Sunday Drive – quick conversation about current events, politics, pop culture and more, from the perspective of a couple of guys trying to follow Jesus.

Hosts: Matt Hill and Nate Polzin. Presented by the Church in Drive of Saginaw, MI, as often as possible. Please visit churchindrive.com and facebook.com/thechurchindrive

Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: advent, angels, Christ, Christmas, culture, demons, holidays, incarnation, Jesus, marian, Mary, Miracles, politics, pop culture, Religion & Spirituality, Santa

The Impossible: Interview with Joyce Smith

November 7, 2017 by J. Alan Sharrer 1 Comment

Photo credit: Lori Straine via Hatchette Press

Skiing, sledding, snowball fights, mugs of hot cocoa—winter means different things to people.  In the case of Joyce Smith, it means something more.

Life.

In her book The Impossible (releases today via Hatchette Press), she tells the story of her son John, a child she adopted from Guatemala.  When he was 14 years old, an event occurred that is nothing short of miraculous.  I recently had the opportunity to talk with her about John and why he is receiving such large amounts of attention—all from a local news story.

Smith’s life wasn’t a perfect one.  As she put it, she had her own “littered trail of disasters.” Her first child was given up for adoption and she nearly committed suicide at one point.  But she adopted John from Guatemala and watched him grow up into a typical teenager who was pretty good at basketball. After one game in January 2015 where he scored the winning basket, he was asked by a friend to spend the night.  It just so happened that a cold spell caused the local lake to freeze over, so after throwing rocks to test the ice, they walked around on it.  The next day, they tried it again—but the ice gave way and both fell into the 40 degree water.  Nineteen minutes later, John was pulled from the lake completely lifeless (his friend made it out okay). Smith remembers telling God in a loud, demanding conversation, “You can’t take my son from me. We asked for him seventeen years ago.”

John was rushed to the hospital as doctors tried to revive him and increase his 88 degree body temperature.  Nothing was working.  He was, by all accounts, dead.  The doctors wanted to let Smith see John before they called the time of death, so she entered the room and continued praying. An hour later, one of the nurses picked up a faint pulse.  This was amazing in its own right, but there were many issues John was dealing with (multiple organ failure, no brain function).  Smith made it clear to the multitude of doctors and nurses that there would be no negative talk around him—even though he wasn’t expected to live through the evening.  “Life and death is in the tongue,” she told me.

Nineteen days later, John walked out of the hospital on his own as if nothing ever happened.  Three weeks after that (40 days in total), he was released from all of his doctors and given a completely clean bill of health.

At its essence, The Impossible is a story of miracles.  It is also a story of hope, prayer, and how a community rallied around one of their own.  A local news reporter covered the story, and it went viral quickly.  The whole series of events has been likened by Smith as a “tapestry of miracles,” from the specific doctors helping John to the local firefighters testing out cold weather retrieval gear four days before the accident in the exact same location John fell through the ice.

Of course, not every occurrence of drowning ends in a miraculous story like John’s. Smith said that God answers our prayers, but not always how we want.  In this case, he wanted to let people know that he has the final word in all situations.  It requires trust and faith akin to Abraham, who did whatever God asked without question—even to the point of nearly sacrificing Isaac (see Genesis 22:1-19).  He wasn’t perfect, but God called him a friend.

The Impossible comes out in book form today, but Smith mentioned having a conversation with a gentleman for 45 minutes while waiting to be interviewed on television. The gentleman turned out to be Devon Franklin, who is about to begin filming the movie version of the book through 20th Century Fox.  I’m sure we’ll take a look at that once we get closer to the film’s release date.

(Thanks to Roya Eftekari from Rogers & Cowan for setting up the interview)

Filed Under: Books, Current Events, Interviews, OtherFish Tagged With: book, DeVon Franklin, Doctors, Drowning, Faith, John Smith, Joyce Smith, Miracles, movie, Tapestry of miracles, The Impossible

The Wedding Plan – Do You Believe In Miracles?

May 19, 2017 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

“I have a hall. I have a dress. The apartment is almost ready. It’s a small task to God to find me a groom by the end of Hanukkah.”

The Israeli romantic comedy The Wedding Plan is all about faith—especially believing in miracles. Michal (Noa Koler) is 32 and wants the stability and respect that comes with marriage. But when her fiancé breaks off the engagement a month before the wedding, Michal decides to go ahead with her plans, counting on God to provide the man who will be the love of her life in time for the event.

She has spent ten years with matchmakers and figures that she has had 490 hour dates with 123 men. Yet there is no one that seems to be for her. But because she believes God is good and will be good for her, she sets off with this plan to have a wedding even if she doesn’t yet know who the groom will be. With two matchmakers setting up dates for her, she continues to meet men. Some might be willing to marry her, but it isn’t just being married she wants.  She wants love.

It is of note that Michal is in the Hassidic branch of Judaism. She wants a Hassidic husband, but the ones she meets often have their own quirks. (E.g., one will not look at her during the date because he says, “If I never look at another woman, my wife will be the most beautiful woman in the world.”) At one point she flies to the Ukraine to visit the tomb of Reb Nachmann (a 18th/19th Century Hasidic spiritual leader). There she meets a secular musician who teaches her how to find joy, but would he be a husband for her?

Early on, she is sure this will work out, even though her friends and family think the whole idea is crazy. As the date draws nearer, her faith begins to waiver, but others bolster her up with their own faith that a miracle will happen.

It is not coincidental that the wedding is planned for the last night of Hanukkah. That festival is itself a story of a miracle—of God providing what was needed in an impossible situation. For Michal this whole plan is an act of faith. However, others may not see it as such. When her family brings in a rabbi to talk to her about it, he cautions her against counting on miracles, which can be a sign of irresponsibility. He also questions what would happen to her faith if the plan were to fail. Is Michal truly stepping out in faith, or is she setting up God to carry the blame for her unhappiness? Can she assume that God’s will is going to prevail in this scenario she has created?

How do miracles fit in with concepts of faith? Certainly pastors (and others) are asked to pray for miracles from time to time. The Bible tells stories of miracles and churches often encourage people to expect miracles in their lives. But do we ask for those things without believing they will ever happen? Do miracles often not come because we didn’t really believe in them when we asked? Is the presence or absence of miracles in our lives because of our faith?

Oh, I haven’t mentioned whether this has a fairytale ending or if perhaps Michal discovers something about herself that makes that fairytale unimportant. Will a miracle happen? If so, will it be the miracle she wanted?

Photos courtesy of Roadside Attractions

Filed Under: Film, Reviews Tagged With: Faith, Hanukkah, Israel, Judaism, Miracles, Noa Koler, Rama Burshtein, romantic comedy

Miracles and Hope – The Story of God (Ep. 6)

May 8, 2016 by J. Alan Sharrer 4 Comments

Past Articles in This Series: Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | Episode 5
CloudsIn the final episode of The Story of God (tonight 9PM/8 Central), narrator and host Morgan Freeman shares a personal story when, as a teenager, he was in a hospital with pneumonia and an abscess on his lung.  When it burst, he almost died.  Yet he survived and eventually became one of the premiere actors in Hollywood.  Was that a miracle?

Alcides Moreno was in New York preparing to wash windows with his brother on the top of a 47-story skyscraper. While on the platform, the cables snapped, sending both of them hurtling to the ground some 500 feet below. Alcides survived, but his brother didn’t (typically, a 10-story fall is instant death).  He’s not sure if that was a miracle, but believes God gave him a “second chance.”

So what exactly is a miracle?  The Random House Dictionary defines a miracle as “an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.” We talk of miracles all the time, ranging from somehow getting an A on a test we didn’t study to sports teams succeeding despite everything being stacked against them (think of Leicester City in the Barclays Premier League winning the title yesterday at 5000:1 odds [worse than Elvis getting out of his grave]).  But do they really exist or is it just a really big game of chance that happens to swing the right way once in a great while?

Jerusalem - The Church of the Holy SepulcherFreeman discovers that Christians and Jews are united about miracles being a key aspect of their faith (after all, most of the key elements of the Bible are pretty miraculous according to the above definition, such as Moses parting the Red Sea and Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead). The Catholic Church verifies miracles (two) in order to confer sainthood upon deceased individuals. In addition, prayer and faith in God makes a big difference. Tom Renfro, a pastor of a church in Virginia, shares his personal story about having cancer and not seeing the doctor, asking for prayers instead.  He eventually heard God tell him it was time to go to the doctor, then went in for one round of chemo and was completely healed.  Renfro attributes the miracle to his faith and the faith of the people around him.

Other beliefs vary as to the importance of miracles. The Egyptians believed everything that happened in a person’s life was the will of the gods.  In the case of the Romans, they believed their panoply of gods determined the outcome of chariot races at the Circus Maximus (think Ben-Hur), yet humans could help speed the process along by cheating and such. In the case of Taoism, everything is connected and the fates of an individual are set at birth. However, Jenny Liu, a fate calculator (that’s a great title to put on a resume), tells Freeman there is still room for a miracle since, in her words, “Birds don’t fly; they’re flown. Fish don’t swim; they’re carried.”  Buddhists go as far to say that humans can perform miracles such as love, peace, reconciliation, and the transformation of the mind.

Simply put: there’s a lot more to life than meets the eye and, if anything, miracles offer hope to a world that increasingly needs to know possibility can become reality.

Filed Under: Reviews, Television Tagged With: Alcides Moreno, Ben-Hur, Buddhist, Catholic Church, Christian, Circus Maximus, hope, Jewish, Lazarus, Miracles, Morgan Freeman, Moses, National Geographic, Saints, Taoism, The Story of God, Tom Renfro

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