Choosing Miracles

Consider the possibility that there might be another way.

Just a short missive to remind you that God - by whatever name you call Him/It/Her -is bigger than your problems, and that love works miracles.

It can be very depressing these days, seeing how the very pillars of civilization as we know it seem to be crumbling all around us. From a degraded environment to assaults on our democracy to rising authoritarianism to Covid to racial injustice to economic inequities - you know the list by now - it can be tempting to let emotional gravity bring us down.

But at a certain point in life we simply decide, do I want to be victim or do I want to be a victor? Victimhood is almost exalted in our society today, and in a way that isn’t healthy. All of us have been wounded in life, and the very times we live in are wounding. But still, it’s up to us whether or not we choose to live from the wound. All of us, in our own way, can choose instead to be healers.

Since miracles occur naturally as expressions of love, that means every thought of love is a healing thought. We’re healers today if we love today. If we bless instead of blame. If we forgive instead of judge. If we focus on the innocence in people instead of on their guilt.

And that will change everything. Our problem is that we put more faith in the power of our problems to destroy us, than we put faith in the power of love to heal us.

Let’s try to be healers rather than victims today. Take whatever problem is plaguing you, and consider the possibility that love can heal it. See how you’re withholding love from anyone in a situation, including yourself. And be willing to change just that perception. Be willing to see the situation differently. Be willingly to choose love, and see what happens.

This isn’t a difficult way to live; it’s just a different way to live. What’s difficult is getting over our resistance to doing it, so trained are we by the thinking of the world to choose attack and defense and anger and blame before we consider the possibility of forgiveness. Today, though, let’s choose differently.

Love is to fear what light is to darkness; in the presence of one, the other cannot be. For the sake of our sad and fearful and weary world, let’s choose another way.

Hiroshi Watanabe

Dear God,

Make me an instrument of love

That I might help to heal the world.

Amen