Miracles Are the Exception: One Year Bible Reading for July 27

 
Today we read from these verses in the One Year Bible:

2 Chronicles 19:1-20:37
Romans 10:14-11:12
Psalm 21:1-13
Proverbs 20:4-6

Let's look at Romans. We're asked some rhetorical questions here. How can people believe unless they're told the gospel? How can they hear unless they're told? Who's going to tell them? Well, the logical answer to these questions is that we should go tell everyone the gospel so they'll believe and become Christians.

But stop for a minute. The very person WRITING these verses, Paul, wasn't saved that way. He was saved through a miracle - a direct intervention, where God basically smacked him in the head, knocking him off his horse, and spoke directly from heaven asking, "Why are you persecuting Me?" Paul, in other words, was saved by a miracle.

But that's unusual, right? It does still happen today. We hear stories of people becoming Christians because Jesus appeared to them. And saints are beatified today because at least two miracles are attributed to their intercession. But usually, like our day in, day out lives, there are no miracles. God doesn't come and knock us down and ask us booming questions from heaven. We don't see large bodies of water suddenly divided. We don't see dead people coming back to life. Because God SOMETIMES intervenes and does things that can't be explained away.

But most of the time, we are just called to love people. That's our daily marching order: love. Love everyone, but especially love your enemies. That's the hallmark of being a Christian.

God, thanks for occasionally performing miracles to boost our faith - and for calling us to love all the time.