Miracles and dreams

God and I are having a misunderstanding.

Not on His part, but certainly on mine.

I've got some ideas about God that I know are inaccurate at best and outright sinful at worst.

My friends and I have been talking about miracles, about God's actions in our lives. I know these days we have to look a little harder to find the miracles that He performs. He hasn't parted seas, or made prison walls crumble but I believe that new life is a miracle. (I'm looking forward to becoming a grandmother for the first time in April.) That the spring comes after the winter is a miracle. When there is hope after devastation or that there can be reconciliation between friends who have been parted is a miracle.

I've always had the belief that to be loved by the one you love... is a miracle.

My problem is not in believing that miracles exist today, but that He would give miracles to me. That is the misunderstanding that He and I are having.

Last week during church Greg showed the Cardboard testimony video that has been available on the net for some time. What struck me and my friend was the testimony of healing that God had given to several of the couples in their marriages. Right now I realize how miraculous that really is. I know with clear understanding just how difficult that can be. I do believe it can happen. I just don't believe that it can happen for me.

Really when you think about that it's like a reverse pride. I can believe it for anyone else, but I am the exception. God doesn't care that way about me. Or He chooses not to do that for me, or I haven't been good enough, or faithful enough. Whatever the reason, the end result is the same. I know thinking this way is incredibly wrong. I know that God is not like that.

Incredibly prideful, isn't it!

I didn't go into marriage with rose colored glasses. We were both carrying some baggage so I knew it would be hard work to maintain the relationship. I always thought that if I just kept trying, giving my best and trusting God to be the center of my life, that He would bless the marriage and that we would grow as a couple together and in His love. Apparently that is not the formula God uses. I'm not sure why I worked so damn hard and why there was no return on it. I married because I wanted an intimate relationship with someone else, someone to share life with. It's not that complicated. My desire for it, ( that close relationship), is so deep. I thought that would be enough.

I feel that God has held out on me.

So I wonder why my life has been so short on miracles, so short on the certainty of His great love for me? In speaking with my friends last night, I know that I am not alone in my thoughts.

Pastor Greg has been talking about faith, specifically Abraham's faith. That he would leave the land that he knew just on the promise of God. The promise of a new land, a new country. Hebrews 11 says that if they looked back to the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return to it. But they didn't, they kept going, because of the promise that God gave them. They desired a new country, a heavenly one. Because of that, God was not ashamed to be called their God. Because of that faith, He prepared a city for them.

My faith is being tested. Whether I can believe in something new, in the hope of His promise to me. Whether He can do the miraculous for me. I guess that is the nature of miracles....they hold the essence of impossibility. They require a God bigger than my ability to imagine...or to dream.

'The dream is always running ahead of one, to catch up, to live for a moment in union with it, that was the miracle.'
Anais Nin