Too Smart For Miracles?

Are You Too Smart For Miracles?

It was just a casual party conversation. I didn’t know the other guy very well, so the discussion skipped around like a smooth stone on a pond. I don’t recall how the stone skipped onto “religion” but suddenly he said, “I’m just too smart for miracles.”

I’ve learned to smile and nod at statements like that. There’s a time and place to respond, and this was neither. So we skipped to another topic and the moment passed.

But his pronouncement stuck with me like a pebble in my shoe—and before you make any wheelchair jokes, pebbles in my shoe ARE still irritating.

Can we be “too smart for miracles”?

We’ve cheapened the word. Miracle doesn’t mean inexplicable or highly unlikely. Outcomes we can’t explain are usually just that—unexplainable, at least at the time. It’s easy to scoff when every extraordinary event is characterized as miraculous.

An improbable end to a football game isn’t a miracle.

Sight restored by mud made from spit. Five thousand people fed from an armful of supplies. A man with withered legs stands straight and strong, healed by a single command.

These things simply can’t happen. The probability isn’t small—it’s ZERO. No science can ever explain water turned to wine.

And then there’s Christmas. A virgin becomes pregnant and gives birth to a boy who turns out to be God. The infinite I AM chooses to enter His creation. Uncontainable God confines Himself within a human body. Love purposely assumes tangible form.

No way to explain it. Literally, totally impossible—unless what we see isn’t all that is. Unless God exists.

I know really smart people who don’t believe in God. I know really smart people who do. Faith isn’t a function of intelligence.

I wonder if I think I’ve got God figured out. Am I so eager to explain God that I lose sight of His unexplainable nature? Do I confine Him within a box that “makes sense” to me?

Instead of concocting a clever response for a party conversation, I want to acknowledge that Jesus is beyond my understanding.

I don’t want to be too smart for miracles.

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