"Do Big Tragedies Negate Small Miracles?" was a post from 2009 that I'd like to mention again today. It deals with the discrepancy between some people testifying of small miracles when, for example, trying to find lost car keys or a stray cat, while tragedy and death sweeps the earth. For someone whose car was just stolen or wrecked while engaged in Church service, hearing someone else bear testimony of God's mercy in finding lost car keys can easily raise all sorts of questions. For the parent whose child has died, hearing others testify of miraculous healing of a child can cause the heart to cry out, "Why not my child?"

Sadly, we live in a mortal world filled with pain and death. Occasionally, though, there is relief, even miraculous relief. The miracles are the exceptions. Normally, when believers are thrown into the fire, they burn and die (as Alma and Amulek witnessed to their horror in the Book of Mormon, and as the history of Christianity also testifies). But sometimes, so rarely, we have cases like Shadrach and company in the Book of Daniel who miraculously survive the furnace. Be glad for them and their posterity, not angry at the apparent unfairness of God's miracles. Small or large, miracles are not normal and are not meant to be distributed uniformly, on demand, according to our sense of fairness. When they occur, let us not feel grief that we were not the rare recipients. Let us not belittle those who received the miracle nor condemn ourselves for not receiving it.

While it's easy to grow weary of people testifying of God's power in finding little things, there can be divine purposes achieved in those little events. My own testimony of God's reality began with a 6-year-old child's prayer seeking God's help to find the precious plastic magnifying glass that Dad had loaned to me. I had looked everywhere without success and needed it. My Dad needed that 5-cent toy for his work, I thought, and I had lost it. After praying as my mother had taught me, I got up off my knees and made a beeline for a middle drawer in my dresser. I moved something and there it was. That child felt that God has answered a prayer miraculously, and was the beginning of many personal experiences in prayer. It was also the beginning of many personal experiences with lost objects where things far more precious and more worthy of prayer were not recovered, including a tragic loss last week with severe and profound implications that I can't get into here. But it would be easy for me, suffering from the loss of something desperately needed, to wonder how God could not help me find something much more important when a worthless magnifying glass is "miraculously" restored for a kid.

I'm going to have to trust God on this one, and remember the basic rules of mortality here: this is a tough place where we are all going to face pain, loss, and death. Some sooner, some later. And among these basic rules is the corollary that when something cannot be found, it's lost and probably isn't coming back. If someone does get an exception to that, be glad for them. But don't get bitter or upset that it wasn't you.

Don't begrudge folks their miracles. Even if it involves lost car keys or cats.
Continue reading at the original source →