MIRACLES HAPPEN AS WE DO OUR JOBS

They're calling it "Miracle on the Hudson," the landing of a United Airways plane safely in the Hudson River after its engines were disabled by birds in flight. The captain is being hailed as a hero; he maintains he was just doing his job. That's often the way it goes.

Healing events that would have been considered miraculous even fifty (perhaps even twenty) years ago happen routinely today because doctors, nurses and researchers do the work they were trained to do. Mental illness that once may have been labeled as demon possession can now often be miraculously treated with drugs and/or therapy. A runner's pair of amazing prosthetic legs caused a stir when they were deemed an unfair advantage by his opponents. Just as it was said of Jesus, the blind receive sight, the lame walk, and the sick are healed, all because of people who day after day, simply do their jobs.

Certainly the unexplainable continues to happen: the untreatable illness that suddenly disappears, the unavoidable collision that is avoided, etc. But miracles large and small also happen when people like you and me use the gifts God has given us and the roles God has give us to do the work God has called us to do.

You see, we are God's hands in this world. We were put here to do God's holy work in the midst of God's creation. It's a miracle, they say, every time a baby is born. But it's a miracle, too, when you think of it, every time that same little child grows up to be a happy, healthy, responsible adult, because of the gentle guidance of a loving parent or guardian. It may have been a miracle that that airliner landed in the Hudson, but it's also a miracle that more such emergency landings do not occur--a miracle due in no small part to the skills practiced by those who design, build, test, maintain, inspect, fly and guide those planes. Sometimes it seems a miracle that one can put a teenager through a drivers'-training course and have him/her come out able to guide a ton of metal, plastic and rubber safely down the road. All too soon I will have to trust that the miracle will, indeed, occur for our own children, through the work of someone who is just doing his/her job.

So thank God for the unexplainable miracles, to be sure, but also for those that happen through the ordinary work that you, I, and others do day after day, with the miraculous help of God.