Impossible

I will readily admit to you that I don’t like impossible. Even “unlikely” has been known to put me into a state of depression that can take me weeks to get out of; impossible is, well, impossible.

I will also readily admit to you that I know this is one of the areas in which God and I think differently. I kind of understand how He thinks; I just don’t think that way, myself. When I consider impossible, I think in terms of loss, disappointment, grief, and attempting to turn my thoughts to something else in order to assuage the pain. God sees impossible—indisputably—as an opportunity to get something done and, if I may say so, to show off.

We’ve got this statement that goes, “While there is life, there is hope,” but we didn’t get that from God’s mouth—or from His mind, either. In one respect it is true that God “doesn’t mess with dead stuff,” but in a different way we could in fact say that He doesn’t mess with anything until it’s dead. Let me attempt to explain.

God designed what we call “nature,” and made it the “natural” way for things to happen. He set it in motion, and it is generally how things work. Thus it is normal for babies to be born to youngish couples, normal for persons in their sixties and seventies to experience reduced functionality of most physical and mental facilities, and normal for folks to be dead before they get around to celebrating their 100th birthday. Those things are a part of how God designed nature.

For all that nature was God’s original design, however, He is aware that we get to taking nature for granted, so when He wants to show Himself, He does something extraordinary, and in order for what He does to be extraordinary, He has to either wait for nature to work its course toward death, or hasten death along by one means or another. For Abraham and Sarah, He waited for nature to take its course, and then, when death—or the inability to produce life—had naturally set in, He performed the miracle of giving life. In Jesus’ case, God didn’t wait for Jesus to die a natural death; He hastened the death process, and in a most public sort of way, so that the miracle of life would be that much more impressive.

You have perhaps heard me say it before, but even I forget it sometimes: I want to see miracles. A while back I think I may have gone so far as to say that I want my whole life to be a miracle. Doesn’t that sound fabulous? Doesn’t it sound exciting? Yes, but!

But between the natural and the supernatural, between the normal and the miraculous, lies death. Between the present moment and my miracle is impossible. Don’t kid yourself! Death and impossible are both as ugly as anything on earth ever becomes.

Then, afterward, is the miracle.

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