Miracles and Moses

Moses was a man who saw many miracles. Perhaps he is the man who saw more miracles than any other man who has ever lived. If we try to number just how many miracles he experienced it becomes hard to measure. His miraculous salvation from death when all the Israelite males were to be put to death at birth pales in comparison to the parting of the Red Sea and the drowning of the Egyptian army. Should we count both as miracles? God speaking to him out of a bush that burns but is not consumed - a metaphor or a miracle? Should we count the ten plagues of Egypt as one miracle or ten? Of course, it was Albert Einstein who said, "There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." But a conservative estimate suggests that Moses experienced ten miracles from God. A generous estimate puts the number around twenty. Most of these events happened after Moses was eighty years old. Moses aging process is likely a miracle in itself. If we round out the number of miracles to 20 and divide them over his entire life that is one miracle every six years. Even if we were to only look at the last forty years of his life, the number becomes one miracle every two years.

What is my point? Even in the life of the man who witnessed many miracles from the hand of God, miracles are rare. If we could be fortunate enough to witness a few miracles in our lives we should consider ourselves very blessed. I will testify that I am one who has been fortunate enough to have experienced several miracles. Some of the miracles I have experienced are enumerated and summarized in previous blogs. (Start at this one if you want to read about some.1)

Frances Collins, a physician and scientist and follower of Jesus, put some of this in perspective when he said:
Perhaps on rare occasions God does perform miracles. But for the most part, the existence of free will and of order in the physical universe are inexorable facts. While we might wish for such miraculous deliverance to occur more frequently, the consequence of interrupting these two sets of forces would be utter chaos. (Frances Collins, The Language of God, p. 44)2

As you and I look for miracles in our own lives, we must resist the temptation to seek too many and resist the temptation to see too few. How many miracles would be sufficient to convince us of the existence of God? As for me, I have been blessed with an abundance.

1 http://hungerandthirst4.blogspot.ca/2012/06/ebenezer.html
2 (Collins 2006, 44)