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Health & Fitness

I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES

I believe in miracles. 

The other day I realized that a miracle had occurred in Atlanta. Multitudes of people know about it but probably would not describe it as such.

One definition of a miracle is an event that human power and ingenuity could not make happen. Therefore it can only be attributed to a supernatural or divine being. If this is the only way to define miracle, then I would identify this happening as something else.

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The primary definition of miracle in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is an event caused by the power of God. But it offers a secondary definition that is valid: a very amazing or unusual event, thing, or achievement. While I do not disagree with the primary definition, it is this secondary understanding with which I conclude that a miracle of major proportions has occurred.

This beneficial event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature is related to a very heavily traveled section of highway in metro Atlanta.

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The southernmost leg of Georgia Highway 400 opened in 1993 as a toll road connecting Interstate 85 just north of downtown Atlanta with I-285 on the north side of the city. The toll was to expire in 2011 but the governor and the state toll road authority decided to extend the toll past the original deadline.

Then the miracle occurred. At 11:08 AM on Friday, November 22, 2013 the last toll was collected from the same couple that paid the first toll twenty years earlier. You ask, how does that qualify as a miracle? Once a tax has been enacted have you ever known it to be removed? That is why I call this a miracle. While it is not contrary to the laws of nature, it certainly is statistically an unlikely event.

C. S. Lewis said, “God seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.” In this instance I believe God could have wiped out that toll and struck down those toll booths at anytime during that 20 year period. The fact that abolishing the payment to travel this highway was not the result of supernatural intervention does not make it less of a miracle.

A very smart and wise man (Albert Einstein) once said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”  There are so many things that we accept as commonplace that are really miracles.  The smile of a baby is admired but we accept it as something to be expected. We have viewed so many sunsets that we fail to see the splendor and majesty of them. When we lose the sense of awe and wonder, we lose our enthusiasm for life. It takes a miracle to help us live the way we were intended to live.

Turkish playwright and novelist Mehmet Murat Ildan says, “Life is a miracle; walking is a miracle; watching the sunset is a miracle; everything is a miracle, because existence is a miracle!” 

We drive the streets and roads along with millions of others and arrive safely at our destinations. That is a miracle. Our families and friends love us in spite of our idiosyncrasies. That is a miracle. Our Creator, who knows us best, loves us most. That is a miracle.

I believe in miracles.

Jamie Jenkins

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