When Miracles Were Real

by Roseanna White | Oct 9, 2013 | Ancient World, Remember When Wednesdays

Medieval Miracles, from a 13th century abridgement of the Domesday Book

We live in a world of doubt. With special effects and computer graphics, folks can make pretty much anything look real. Look like it happened.

But we know better. Right? It’s all just show. Made up. Pretend.

We’ve been conditioned to doubt. Not just what we see on television, but everything. We’re hard pressed to ever accept anything that looks miraculous, because come on–it’s more likely a hoax. Sleight of hand. Misdirection.

I mean, sure, there were miracles in the Bible. Healing the blind. The lame. Feeding the five thousand. Walking on water. Sure. But that was Jesus. Maybe the apostles. That’s different. And that’s not weird. It’s an accepted kind of miracle, those ones in the Bible. Easy to accept, right?

Then I read it all more closely, and a line of Jim Rubart’s Soul’s Gate comes to mind. “What,” one of his characters says (I may be paraphrasing slightly), “have you only been reading the boring parts of the Bible?”

I mean, seriously. Look at the Old Testament. Saul goes to a medium and calls up Samuel–who appears!

Um…our comfy little spiritual boxes get a little chafing at that one.

On the day Jesus died, the graves opened, and the dead were seen walking about.

Um…that surely means something other than what it sounds like, right? (I included this in A Stray Drop of Blood, and apparently some folks thought I was getting weird and making it up–until they looked it up, LOL.)

In Acts, we read how Paul grew frustrated with a girl with a spirit of fortune-telling and turned around and cast out the demon. Okay. Nothing too worrisome there…until we read on that her master was furious because now he had no way of making money.

Which implies that it worked. She really could tell the future, at least in part. We don’t like that at all, do we? The other side shouldn’t have power like that.

This time of year, you can’t go out in public or turn on the TV without seeing a lot of Halloween stuff. My kids think it’s all grand fun, and they love to ask questions like “Is this real? Or is it pretend?”

And you know…sometimes it’s hard to know how to answer them. Is it real? Mostly no, the things on TV. Mostly not. But then, there’s so much that goes beyond our comprehension, largely, I think, because we’re so quick to doubt. We dismiss everything.

But maybe we shouldn’t. Because if we don’t pay attention to it, we can’t fight it–and a lot of these “weird” stories in the Bible are of God’s servants having to deal with this stuff.

The spiritual world is baffling…but it’s there. And sometimes I wonder what our faith would be like if we were a little more open to learning the truth about it…and a little less quick to ignore all we don’t understand.

I’m delving into some of this in A Soft Breath of Wind…nothing resembling the cartoon ghost, LOL, but I’m reading the Bible carefully and with a point of looking at we normally dismiss as too “weird.” I’m prayerfully asking the Lord for understanding of some of these bothersome parts. And it’s pretty fun to see what new “weirdness” springs up every day in my reading. 😉

Remember When . . . People Were Implied?

by Roseanna White | Oct 2, 2013 | Ancient World, Remember When Wednesdays

As I’ve mentioned on here before, I’m in the midst of doing the Bible-in-a-year schedule…which I started in July. So I’m still in Kings and Chronicles (it’s the chronological Bible, so things are mixed up.)

I’ve read the Old Testament several times in my life, but it’s been a while since I read all the way through it, and this being me, I usually read a story and think, “But what about…?” which leads me to wondering. About things like the unnamed, unmentioned characters obviously present.

Samuel Blesses Saul – from Doré’s English Bible, 1866

Like when Samuel was a young man, not yet a prophet, a “righteous man of Israel” came and prophesied against Eli and his sons. Insert Roseanna going, “What, no name? Come on! Who was it?? Do we ever see him again? Had he been wronged by those evil sons? How?”

Then many chapters later, after Samuel is grown, we read that his sons weren’t so righteous either. At which point Roseanna goes, “So…when did Samuel get married? To whom??”

I know, I know–those little details aren’t often important in the Old Testament. But still, they make me ask questions. And sometimes surprise me with what information they do offer. (Like how many wives Gideon had–yowza! So didn’t remember that part from my previous reads…)

And since these are the kids of things that inspire me to write, we’ll just keep the questions coming. 😉

Are there any biblical stories that made you pause to wonder about the people missing in the account, but who were obviously there?