Miracles

We all know the stories of miracles in the Bible---two loaves and fishes multiplying to feed 500 people, the pot of oil that did not run dry until the famine ended, an iron ax head that floated, and many more. We say we believe those things happened and that we serve a God who can do the impossible. But do we really believe it? Do miracles still happen today? 

Let me answer that question by passing on to you a story I read this week on Lucinda Miller's blog. She is a conservative Mennonite writer in Wisconsin. Here it is, in her exact words.

The second answered prayer I want to praise Him for happened to my brother in law, Jeff.

Recently, on a cold winter day, his three little daughters stayed at our place while their mom was gone. Jeff came by to pick them up after work. He was near the village of Tony, about 10 miles from our place, and already running late, when the gas light went on. I’ll make it, he thought.

But later, pulling out of our place with 15 miles still to drive, he started to worry a little. So cold out. And he had the girls.

“Pray we have enough gas to make it home,” he told them.

So they did. As little girls do, taking it for granted that of course God would answer.

They arrived home without trouble, and he pulled right up to their gas tank to fill the car. But when he stuck the nozzle in–glug, glug, glug. Three glugs, and gas was running out the top. The car was full.

Impossible. It took time to get gas from this tank–it was gravity-pulled. And this had been only seconds, anyway. Not enough time to fill any car from any tank.

“What does the gas gauge say?” he asked his oldest, MacKenzie.

“Oh, it’s close to full,” she said.

He looked himself, and the gauge was full up.

It couldn’t be a glitch in the gas gauge. He’d driven the car four hundred miles yesterday and knew it was empty. And there was no way anyone could have filled it in the twenty-five miles between Tony and home.

The only explanation: God.

But why?

He could have gotten them home easily enough without filling the tank.

“I think it was to show me it was really Him,” Jeff said. “I’m usually pretty skeptical about stories like that.”

He’d had a conversation only recently with a man who didn’t believe in God. “The only reason you do,” he told Jeff, “is because you were brought up that way.”

And Jeff had wondered if he was right. 

If God had answered their prayer by merely making the gas reach to get them home, they probably would have said, "Thank God we made it. That was close." But God proved He was real in a way that could not be doubted or denied by filling the tank. How can that be? The things that are impossible with men are possible with God.