i Don't Believe in Magic. I Believe in Miracles

"Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened." Matthew 7: 7-8

Make no mistake about it.  I used to believe in magic and miracles, although magic seemed easier to embrace.  Miracles, I saw as Jehovah parting the Red Sea and holding up each side until over two million emancipated Hebrew slaves crossed over on dry land.  Because I lived through books as a child and teen, I couldn't, or didn't, consciously separate magic from miracle. While life on the Near North Side of Chicago wasn't idyllic, it certainly wasn't dismal enough to want to escape reality.  Books were just easier.  I could sit on the stoop of our home and be subsumed into the 17th century with the opening of a book or the turning of a page.  Nothing drab or dreary about that!

So, miracles and magic became conjoined twins most of the time.  Truth be told, I believed in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy,  and magicians who pulled rabbits out of black hats.   Fantasies fit me. For a while.  I didn't begin to understand the distinctions until the second decade of life.  Remember, I had escaped Church attendance by hiding behind class projects, studying non-stop, and relying on the importance my parents attached to education.  "Getting a good education served as my "Get-Out-of-Jail/Church card.  That meant becoming and sustaining straight-A student status.

Certainly, issues of faith, belief, and trust never ranked in the top ten  A product of an educational system that had made the Age of Reason its god, I had not been introduced to any concept remotely spirituality.  In truth, professors treated the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, as literature during my third-year elective college class.  Period.  Fine with me! No wonder the first time an issue calling for  faith, belief, or trust in a "Higher Being" arose, I came up short.  Spiritual matters only lurked in the background of my life,  a bit player in an off-off-Broadway play.

When my maternal grandmother died after a brief illness, nobody in the family seemed capable of offering spiritual solace, except to mumble that "It was the Lord's will." What?  It was the Lord's will "to take Mama to heaven," which meant she could no longer bring me a treasured small jar of Hellman's Mayonnaise filled with the best chicken salad in the whole, wide world to Sunday School every Sunday? And anyway, how could it be that "Some glad morning when this life is o'er, I'll fly away, To a home on God's celestial shore, I'll fly away."  Glad morning? Death? Superman exploits?

Mama's death-by-flying-away seemed more magical than miraculous, more like a rabbit popping out of a black hat than striking a rod against a rock and imagining water gushing out! The road to some semblance of spirituality however circuitously, widened with the passage of years or the death of a (usually) older relative or family friend.

My grandson, Philip's, death changed all that! Dead at 22 months from a condition I could barely pronounce, it shut me down as it seemed, simultaneously, to tear me open.  While his mom was away at college, I became chief-bottle-washer-and-substitute-caretaker.  The guilt shut me down and the need-to-know-how-and-why-it happened opened me up wider than Bulldog Drummond or Sherlock Holmes

Book stores, the older the better, and libraries, especially the Downtown Main Library became my haunts.  Research swallowed me up and led me to search for spiritual reasons to account for the death of a 22-month old active, engaging toddler.  Researching the Holy Bible, reading books about Christianity, and  discovering a renewed infatuation with the gospel music (and hymnals) of my childhood engulfed me.  I wanted surcease from sorrow, from pain,.  I wanted answers.  Why? Why? Why? I participated in  Grief seminars and began tentatively to heal, or at least to face the  reality of Philip's death.

What happened? What changed me? I can't pinpoint the what or when of it?   The how of it? I turned to God and asked for help.  "Ask the Savior to help you, Comfort, strengthen and keep you; He is willing to aid you, He will carry you through."  Maybe, I was testing Him.  If I were, what arrogance!  However, I also asked Our Father to teach me how to trust Him.  He did, and continues to teach me.  He is the Master Rabbi..  It took me some time to understand that He uses ways and means that only He possesses to do just that.  It was not easy, and I'm still learning, sometimes in the midst of screams, moanings, and groanings.

The most revealing Truth on my journey to differentiate magic from miracle? James 1:5 counseled, "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously without reproach, and it will be given him." I asked for wisdom, and He gave it; yet, I also read the admonition offered in verses 6-8.  Discernment, understanding, and spiritual maturity derive from them. "Ask, and it shall be given to you...for everyone who asks receives..."  It's that simple? Yes, ask, believing---it's that simple!
 
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