Here’s a thought that I have been bouncing around in my head and off James for the past few months. And before I get into it, let me say that I am not a cessationist. I truly do believe that the gifts of the Spirit mentioned in the NT are and can be active in the church today, but I also believe that we humans tend to get in the way. (See the church in Corinth) Now, with that out of the way, on with the show.

The idea really came to me when a non-Christian friend of mine was asking why God didn’t really perform any miracles in America like he did in the Bible. I have to admit that the question kind of caught me off guard, as I didn’t expect this friend to ask this type of question. I responded to him that God still performed miracles, but had to admit that I needed time to process the question. After a few days I went back to my friend and responded to his question with more questions: “What would you do if you saw a man you knew was dying of cancer immediately healed?” or “What would you think if you honestly saw someone raised from the dead?” Almost instantaneously he answered: “Well, I guess I’d try and figure out how they did it.” “And if you couldn’t figure it out?”, I responded. “I guess I’d just assume they used some kind of trick, or the guy wasn’t really dead, or a million other things that I just couldn’t find.” So, when it came down to it, this friend of mine wouldn’t even really believe a miracle if he saw one.

But what if he were to see another kind of miracle? What if the miracle he saw wasn’t something he could explain away? What if instead of seeing people being healed, he saw someone he loved being cared for by a total stranger? What if the miracle he saw wasn’t full of flash and show, but of one person truly taking care of another’s needs? That’s the kind of miracle that he couldn’t dispute. Sure, he could say: “Well, they’re just doing because they feel they have to/the Bible tells them to/etc.” But when it comes down to it, he couldn’t ignore the fact that the event took place. It would be so natural and at the same time, very supernatural.

I’m not saying that no one in America needs to see the kinds of signs performed by the Apostles, but let’s not discount the miracle of love, and the kind of demonstrations of that love that cause people to say: “Why’d they do that?” Because when people start asking that question, they’ve already started heading towards Christ, even if they don’t know it yet.