but wait... there's more

Lewis tells us about miracles and how they interact with nature today in A Year with C.S. Lewis.

I think he's mostly right... when God interjects a miracle into our world, it usually follows the laws of nature as we understand them. Like he said... divine conception leads to a baby nine months later. Miraculous bread is digested. And, following his logic, men raised from the dead, like Lazarus or the son of the widow of Nain, go on to die again eventually.

However. We are thinking of the current laws of our current nature, which has been corrupted. In the ultimate reality, in the "new heavens and the new earth", we won't see corruption. Jesus's glorified body gives us an idea of what our glorified bodies will be like... and one thing they are not, is mortal. They won't die. When Jesus rose from the dead, His new body did NOT conform to the laws of nature as we know them. His new body conformed to the perfect laws of the eternal nature, which we look forward to when His kingdom comes in its entirety.

We see some other hints of it now, too. Eucharistic miracles, incorrupt saints... they defy the laws of our current nature, because the conform to the laws of the nature to come. God's work doesn't break laws... it points to new and better ones.

And that brings us to our take home lesson. Some people see God as a watchmaker who wound up the universe and then sat back and watched it wind down. That is an error. God is a never ending font of creativity. He creates because that is who He is. And He never ceases to create. He creates a new work in you every day. He takes the bits of our lives that we do right, and the bits that we aren't too thrilled about, and He weaves them together masterfully into a work of art that astonishes us if we take the time to see what He's doing.

It is, I think, as amazing when He works with the common things to create His masterpieces as it is when He works with the miraculous. In fact, it might be MORE amazing. An artist working with perfect materials who creates a beautiful artistic piece is one thing. An artist who works with whatever he can find to make something beautiful is perhaps an even greater genius. And I'm grateful that this is so, since He finds a pretty mixed bag in my life.

Thanks, God, for working such inspiring beauty from the pieces of my life... good and not so good.