Signs and Wonders<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Nothing I said in What God Wants for your Life got me into more trouble than the chapter on signs and wonders: Don\u2019t you believe in miracles? Don\u2019t you\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/whatgodwantsforyourlife\/2011\/07\/signs-and-wonders\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Signs and Wonders\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Nothing I said in What God Wants for your Life got me into more trouble than the chapter on signs and wonders: Don\u2019t you believe in miracles? 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Schmidt, Jr. is inaugural holder of the Rueben P. Job Chair in Spiritual Formation and a Senior Scholar at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, IL. He is also Vice Rector at Good Shepherd, Brentwood, TN; an Episcopal Priest; spiritual director; retreat facilitator; conference leader; and writer. He is the author of numerous published articles and reviews, as well as several books: A Still Small Voice: Women, Ordination and the Church (Syracuse University Press, 1998), The Changing Face of God (Morehouse, 2000), When Suffering Persists (Morehouse, 2001), in Italian translation: Sofferenza, All ricerca di una riposta (Torino: Claudiana, 2004), What God Wants for Your Life \ufeff(Harper, 2005), Conversations with Scripture: Revelation (Morehouse, 2005), \ufeffConversations with Scripture: Luke \ufeff(Morehouse, 2009), and The Dave Test (Abingdon, 2013). He and his wife, Natalie (who is also an Episcopal priest), live in Arrington, TN. 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{"id":519,"date":"2011-07-14T15:37:56","date_gmt":"2011-07-14T15:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/experts.patheos.com\/expert\/frederickwschmidt\/?p=519"},"modified":"2011-07-14T15:37:56","modified_gmt":"2011-07-14T15:37:56","slug":"signs-and-wonders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/whatgodwantsforyourlife\/2011\/07\/signs-and-wonders\/","title":{"rendered":"Signs and Wonders"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Yes\u2026but I don\u2019t believe that signs and wonders are necessarily indicative of the will of God.\u00a0 Sometimes the exceptional is just exceptional.<\/p>\n

For example: I made a major move in employment some years ago \u2014 prayerfully, I might add \u2014 on the basis of what I felt God moving me to do with my life.\u00a0 It was a profoundly difficult choice and rooted finally in questions of vocation.\u00a0 When I told my employer that I was going to be leaving I was promptly offered a 10K raise to stay.\u00a0 That, in my experience, was exceptional \u2014 one could even say, miraculous.\u00a0 BUT it didn\u2019t speak for a moment to the question of what God wanted for my life.\u00a0 In fact, taking that kind offer into consideration would have been a distraction.\u00a0 The right decision was much more deeply rooted in paying attention to the daily, annual, long, slow, work-filled years that lay behind me.<\/p>\n

There are many reasons we pay more attention to the miraculous or exceptional in our lives than we do the daily, lifelong patterns \u2014 all of them understandable, some of them good, some of them bad:<\/p>\n

We look to the miraculous because in principle we believe that God is active in the world and hears our prayers\u2026<\/em>That\u2019s not a bad reason, but it can be easily distorted.\u00a0 God is not a cosmic bellhop and life is not all about us.\u00a0 We are called to serve as Christ served \u2014 we are not hear to live a lifelong, all-you-can-eat buffet.<\/p>\n

We are afraid to have faith\u2026<\/em>all of us use training wheels on spiritual journey \u2014 experiences that bolster our faith: things that have happened to us, answers to prayers, familiar approaches to worship, Scripture.\u00a0 These are good things.\u00a0 But they should not be the object of our trust and confidence (a.k.a., faith).\u00a0 God is the one on whom we are meant to live in ever closer dependence.\u00a0 Days, weeks and years marked by the sameness of life \u2014 or, harder yet, by loss and tragedy \u2014 make it harder to live in dependence upon God.\u00a0 So we look for God-sightings, the miraculous to secure our hope.\u00a0 Those are the moments to cultivate a greater trust in God \u2014 whatever happens.\u00a0 Training wheels are a great thing, but if you show up at the Tour de France with three wheels in back, you are not Lance Armstrong \u2014 and if, as children of God, we show up at the finishing line more dependent than ever on God\u2019s gifts, instead of God, we will have missed the point.<\/p>\n

We also long to experience the presence of God\u2026<\/em>In our materialistic world, where what we can see, feel, hear, touch, and smell makes the more powerful claims on our attention, it is not surprising that we look for the exceptional to reassure us that God is here.\u00a0 That\u2019s understandable.\u00a0 Cultural forces and intellectual forces have left us with the impression that, if God exists at all, God is \u201cout there\u201d beyond the last process or molecule that we have successfully identified.\u00a0 In an environment like that, we are bound to what God to \u201cshow up\u201d with the same, tangible evidence. \u00a0The problem, though, doesn\u2019t lie with God.\u00a0 The problem is with our perceptions:<\/p>\n

The whole of creation, material and non-material, common and exceptional, is the work of God\u2019s creative and sustaining presence.\u00a0 What could be more miraculous than the ability to see, hear and understand \u2014 to love?\u00a0 What could be more miraculous than new life or the wonders of the world around us?\u00a0 The Greek Orthodox church has long held \u2014 and rightly so \u2014 that we owe the miracle of our existence to God as Trinity.\u00a0 The very fact that we count only the exceptional as miracle, then, constitutes one of our problems.<\/p>\n

The other is this: If you aren\u2019t alert to the work of God, you won\u2019t appreciate it.\u00a0 For most of us, as we mature spiritually, we have more and more of those \u201cWhy-didn\u2019t-I-see \u2013this-before?\u201d moments.\u00a0 And the answer, of course, lies not in the supposed absence of God, but in our awareness of God\u2019s presence.\u00a0 You can be in the best of acoustical spaces, with accomplished musicians and if you have a tin ear for music or have never cultivated a love of it, you will not appreciate the music performed.<\/p>\n

The same is true of God\u2019s work.\u00a0 God doesn\u2019t need to work more miracles.\u00a0 We need to learn how to see.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"