Often, there are things in the universe we know are there only by noticing the effects they have on other things. Take, for instance, quarks. To my knowledge, no one has been able to see a quark (quarks are believed to be parts of atoms). No one has ever seen a black hole either, for that matter.
Also, to clarify - I am not going to scroll back up thru the posts to determine who said this to me, but someone implied that I am a literalist when it comes to the Creation story. This is not the case. I believe that God could well have used evolution in some manner to create the universe.
I believe someone else also asked at some point if anyone had ever had God directly intervene in their lives and produce any sort of miracle. This has happened to me and my family, I believe, on two occasions THAT I AM AWARE OF.
I don't want to get all bogged down in every detail but I'd be happy to answer any questions that arise about the details, if anyone's interested.
In the first scenario, my youngest daughter had birth trauma which resulted in a brain injury. She began having up to forty seizures a day. She had basically no sucking instinct and had to have her milk squeezed into her tiny mouth. She was gaining weight very slowly due to projectile vomiting after nearly every meal, and had severe developmental delays. She screamed at the top of her lungs for at least 6 hours a day and slept fitfully most of the rest of the day. Her team of doctors told me that we couldn't diagnose cerebral palsy before about the age of two with any certainty, but they were pretty sure that's what she had. At three months they started her on physical therapy for cerebral palsy. At four months she still could not hold her head up and weighed less than 14 pounds (she was nearly 8 pounds at birth). Her pediatrician told me that she would probably never walk on her own.
I was so mad at God about this. I prayed, screamed at God, shook my hand in his face, turned my back on him, and most of all, I grieved. I would have gladly given my life for hers. I was nearly frantic to try to make things better for my child. I was nearly consumed by the effort to better her life and try to facilitate her healing.
One day I was suddenly struck with this - God is a father. God watched His Son suffer. God loves us with a more perfect love than we can ever imagine. And God has plans for each of us that are more complex and beautiful than we can grasp. We can get weighed down by what we think of as impediments to perfection, but God can use every facet of our lives to His glory. In other words, we can't see the big picture from where we stand, but He can.
I realized that in all my prayers for the healing of my child, I was trying to impose what MY ideas for her were, rather than being willing to accept HIS will for her life, and mine. My ideas were better than God's ideas? I don't think so. I was not truly trusting in Him. I was expecting Him to be my vending machine.
I realized that I would have to trust Him with my child's life. I realized that the very crux of faith is trust - trust that God is omnipotent and in control of things, and that His plan for our lives may differ from ours. I had to trust Him and accept His will, whatever that was.
With that in mind, instead of praying up demands to God to heal my child, I began praying more of a vision than words. I simply let go and imagined that I was laying my beloved baby in God's lap. I could hear the words, "Suffer the little children to come unto Me" as I did this. That was it - that was my prayer.
Things rocked along for several more months, with little improvement for my daughter. The seizures continued, and she continued to struggle to eat. She was also hypersensitive to any sort of stimulation - even flipping on a light could trigger a seizure. It was heartbreaking and very, very frightening.
Her doctors scheduled an appt with her in Atlanta, GA, with a top pediatric neurologist. There was a two month waiting list for an appt with him. Meanwhile, I began relying on my church family more for emotional support. Soon the entire church was praying for this little girl.
I began noticing some improvement and one day I realized that she had gone an entire day without a seizure - then two days, then a week...and as the seizures subsided, she began to be able to keep food down, and then sleep better. One day I noticed that she was holding her head up, the next week, she was sitting by herself, and before I knew it, she was trying to scoot across the floor!!! I can't tell you what it meant for her to sleep through the night, and for me to see a smile break across her precious face!
Her physical therapists were very surprised, because they'd never seen such quick results from such little treatment. Soon it was time for the big appt in Atlanta with the neurologist. He was the top pediatric neurologist in the Southeast so we were very excited and nervous.
He did a complete exam and then reviewed all her charts. He called us into his office and as we sat there, he continued to flip through her records. As he did so in silence, he read and shook his head slowly. I was getting more and more nervous. Finally, he looked up at us and said this:
"I can't explain what I'm seeing. Your daughter definitely had a brain injury at birth. She's definitely been having petit mal seizures for months now. She was very much developmentally delayed and diagnosed with failure to thrive. According to her charts, she's not on any medication, and has only been in physical therapy for two months - is this true?" (It was.)
He then said, "The medical community did not heal your child. But your child is healed. She is one hundred percent normal at this point. Take her home and love her, and expect great things from her." He then slapped her file shut and stood up and escorted us to the door.
As we were walking out, he said, "Have you been using any homeopathic methods to treat her?" I said, "No. But our entire church has been praying for her. That's all I know." He laughed and said, "I've seen stranger things work. I believe in the power of prayer."
As we were getting into our car, suddenly I heard someone calling my name across the parking lot. I looked back and this doctor was running toward us. He literally had tears in his eyes as he grabbed my hand and arm and said this:
"I see so much tragedy in my line of work. I just had to come tell you how much it means to me to be able to give parents good news for a change. I'm serious - I can't tell you how much this has done for me. Thank you, thank you, thank you for coming here today." I didn't know what to say other than, "No, thank YOU!"
My daughter is now a staff sergeant in the US Air Force, and excels at PT - she always aces her physicals and has never had a health problem since.
I can't explain what happened, and neither could her doctors.
I have another example of direct intervention by God in my life as well, but we can start with this one for now.
Yes, of course. The "No True Scotsman" fallacy. You're pulling out all the stops now, huh? Of course it's because I wasn't a "good Christian". I was just "going through the motions". Thanks for telling me what I used to do and feel, but I think I'm a better judge of that. I felt the same things you've felt, and at the time I thought it was God. I have since realized that it wasn't God at all.[/QUOTE
