Have you done any miracles lately?

     So, have you ever raised someone from the dead?  No?  How about miraculously healed someone?  Not recently?  How about something simpler like preached a dynamite sermon or written a book that changed the hearts of thousands?  Still working on that?  Sometimes, I’m afraid because most of us will never do any such dramatic spiritual acts of power we begin to think God does not use ordinary, everyday Christians to act in this world.
Caring for others, showing pastoral care for folks both in and outside the Church, is not very  showy or spectacular.

     When I came to Trinity twenty-two years ago, you know what really made me feel I had made a personal connection?  Just one parishioner made it a point to smile and nod at me every Sunday when he saw me.  That’s it.  Nothing very fancy, but in that simple act I knew I was seen and welcomed.  Especially at that point in my life, it meant the world to me.

     There are so many people in our Church and in the world who are broken-hearted, lonely, and sick, and I’ll tell you a secret — they don’t need a miracle… they just need another human being to really see them and care.  You can do that with a smile and a nod.  You can do that by really listening.  You can do that with a card or going out to coffee with them.  They don’t need the Bishop; they don’t need a priest, they don’t need the deacon… they need you.

     Jesus said in John 13, “I give you a new command: Love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

     Maybe we get blinded by the flash-bang of miracles in the Gospel like walking on water and feeding the 5,000, and we forget, when you show care for another person, it is every bit as powerful and spectacular and life-changing as any other miracle.  So... have you done any miracles lately?