Where are the miracles we were promised?

When we look to the heavens asking for an answer to our troubles, we look for signs of being heard. We do the same when we speak to the people who may enact change, such as our teachers, our politicians, or the leaders in our daily lives. 

We look for guidance. This guidance may be provided through signs. Those signs may not be flashy, but subtle; but those signs may yet be there. Some of you, like me, may be reminded of the scene in Bruce Almighty, when Bruce, played by Jim Carrey, asks for G-d to provide him with signs, all of which he ignores. The human condition may facilitate our wilful ignorance of signs being provided to us, or we may read the signs themselves as either coincidence or happenstance that we take for granted.

In biblical times, signs such as these were clearly required to be flashier. That is apparent when we read of the various miracles that the family of Abraham and later the Hebrews witnessed throughout their ‘adventures’.

These miracles that they experienced are defined as an “extraordinary event or development that brings a very welcome consequence.”

Some of these ‘miracles’ might include:

1. The events that followed G-d’s outstretched arm in the Passover story we read at Seder.
2. The victories of Ancient Israel /Judaea etc. over its various neighbours, whose neighbours’ numbers and military might were greater.
3. The survival of the Jewish people at the hands of those who would see them exterminated or massacred en masse.

The miracle I believe that is best conveyed amongst the Jewish people, is the one located in the Chanukah story, emphasised by the dreidel message:

נס גדול היה שם

“A great miracle happened (t)here.”*

*The author is aware that it is contested there were 4 miracles during the Chanukah story.

It is by far the best recorded message, and most spoken about miracle amongst children. It is succinct, concise, and easily conveyed.

When we look through times long passed at the journeys of humanity, be they Jewish or not, many of the deeds have been labelled as “miraculous”, be they defying expectations or contrary to ordinary processes. One could look broadly at the rise and influence of Islam as a miraculous expedition; one could look at the survival of some of European Jewry during World War Two as completely extraordinary; one could look at the discoveries of penicillin or nuclear fission as unbelievable products of human ingenuity. 

To some, human biology itself is miraculous – the fact that humanity has evolved in such a way that conscious, self-aware thought can be experienced. This is especially when compared to the rest of life on Earth, where no other known species has evolved to rationalise and philosophise – actions which are not necessary to survival in its most practical sense.  

We look back at these events and often dismiss them as “things that happen” or “the way of things.” Whilst this is one valid way of conceptualising events, a more optimistic view would be to say that such occurrences are miracles.

A word to pick up on in the above definition of ‘miracle’ is “welcome.” Why must a miracle be welcome? 

In Hebrew the word ‘נס’ meaning ‘miracle’ is connected to the Aramaic meaning “to carry” or the later Hebrew, meaning “flag, staff” and later “banner, pennant.” Flags and banners were, at least historically, indicative of ideas, important people, or important collections of people, often signifying the effects or agents of great change. To understand נס in its most basic sense, a reasonable interpretation could be being in a state of ease at witnessing a signal for change.  

It might be interesting to note that perspective is important whilst considering the effect of miracles. In a Jewish sense, miracles performed by G-d, or at least through his conduits, benefited the Hebrew and later Jewish nation, and so in the there and then would have been incredibly welcome. The most vivid examples might include the ten plagues or the victory of David over Goliath.

For the Egyptians and Goliath, these intervening events that spelled victory for their opposition, were nothing short of disasters or, in the context of this article, anti-miracles. In everyday life similar events could be waking up and finding that your car’s engine has completely died, with no rhyme or reason to explain it, hours before needing it to drive yourself to the airport. For you, that could be a disaster, but for the person at the airport for whom a last-minute seat on a flight home becomes available, that is a miracle.

Welcome throes of good luck for one are simply the unwelcome grievances of bad luck for others.

To answer the titular question, where are the miracles we were promised? My answer is that they happen so regularly that we pass it off as good luck or bad luck, trivial or not, beauty in the eye of the beholder or proof in the pudding of scientific discovery. Miracles are there, it is simply our choice to recognise and label them as such from our own perspectives.