Small Miracles

Today I'm going to talk about small miracles. Earlier, I had talked about big miracles: Jesus healing the blind and afflicted. But this time, I'd like to discuss the myriad of small miracles I've experienced in my life. I call them "small" because our faith tends to be small in comparison to what's possible, and miracles tend to be proportional to the faith. Or as you may have heard said: faith proceeds the miracle.

Possibly, if I had enough faith and someone else had enough faith to heal me, they could lay their hands on my eyes, and then I'd no longer have to wear these glasses. But I digress. I love the miracles that I've already witnessed in my life.

I've seen several miracles in the form of healing. In my church, we can perform a blessing of healing. This isn't meant to replace medical treatments, but rather to supplement them. As I perform such a blessing, I do my best to listen to the Spirit as to what to say. Sometimes I'm impressed to pronounce an unlikely outcome, and it happens. Sometimes I'm impressed to give comfort because it's time for that person to return.

Fresh out of college, I had no money and no permanent job. This also meant no insurance. We were living with my in-laws, and one very early morning, my wife woke us all up. Our newborn son had a dangerously high fever. One of us said that we needed to take him to the hospital immediately, but we wouldn't be able to afford the bills without insurance. Then one of us came up with a quick idea: perform a blessing of healing, give it a few minutes and see if the fever subsides. We did that and sure enough, within a few minutes, the fever had lifted.

On my mission, during my two-month training in Provo, Utah, I developed some kind of painful sty in my eye -- messing up my vision and concerning me. I asked for a blessing, and then when I went into the doctors office, he touched the sty with a Q-tip and it simply fell off. He said, "Hmmm ... that's strange. I guess it's fixed now."

As if accompanying the spiritual energy during my mission to Korea, I had plenty of these types of experiences. One time we were lost in the middle of the night -- an industrial section of Taegu where no buses or taxis ran, and we didn't know which way to walk to get back home. We stopped, said a prayer, and almost immediately, a bus came out of nowhere. He claimed to be done with the day and he was on his way home, and he was going near our apartment, so he gave us a ride. When got off the bus, I turned to my friend and we said how lucky we were the bus drove past. And then when we turned to look back at the bus, it was gone -- vanished! We had also remembered the bus number, but could not find it anywhere in Taegu. Whoa. (I'm sure to tell this story in more detail and others once I launch my series: "The Adventures of Elder Elder and Elder Benjamin.")

And one more quick one before I wrap up. A couple of decades ago, my family lived in a first-floor apartment. And one night, I dreamt that I saw a spirit standing by our bed next to my pillow. I recognized him immediately -- a former Elder's Quorum president from when I was at BYU. He said he was protecting me from evil spirits that night. The next day, my wife had reported that we had left the sliding door unlocked the previous night. And then when I had gone to the internet to check up on that one Elder's Quorum president, I saw that he had died in a car accident. Yeah ... whoa again.

And yes, I'm full aware of what many atheists say. These stories were not miracles, but rather coincidences -- that we tend to remember the miracles that actually occur and forget the miracles that failed. I promise a more rigorous response to these concerns at a later time, but for now I'll tell you that I believe that they indeed were miracles -- because of my faith. I can feel that God intended these miracles for my benefit and that they occurred because of my level of faith -- not as proof that God exists, but rather that these miracles were needed at the time.

What small miracles have you enjoyed in your own life?