Gratitude Friday: Likely Miracles…

As we were driving to church Sunday morning, my son threw out the theory that IF he laid perfectly flat on the ground before a car hit him, the car would just drive right over him and he’d be fine. FINE.

The kids have been playing outside in the street a good bit lately. My daughter has decided riding her bike is not the scariest of all the activities in the world. Her bestie across the street, however, doesn’t want to ride her bike because it’s too hard to walk it up the driveway to put it back in the garage. Which has to be the lamest excuse for not riding a bike I’ve ever heard.

Believe me, she was teased mercilessly.

By me.

But Christmas brought her a new hoverboard so she doesn’t have to worry about lugging her big ole bike up her slight hill of a driveway. The hoverboard is smaller and lighter, I hear.

Skillet doesn’t ride his bike either. He just runs around while other people ride their bikes. Or their hoverboards or the buddy boards (which is a hoverboard seat type thing that makes it more of a recumbent bike without actually using your legs to pedal anything.)

Being the mean parents we are, we have refused to purchase any additional outdoor equipment until they have successfully mastered training-wheel free bike riding. It’s not that they don’t want to learn. It’s more they’re afraid of falling and getting hurt and they don’t seem to understand you can fall off a hoverboard or a scooter too. And that those things require practice as well.

So sometime in 2022 its possible they’ll figure out the whole bike riding situation out.

Which brings me back to my original story of laying really flat in the middle of the road.

While we live on a culdesac and our neighborhood roads make one big loop back out on to the main road, we do have people who live here and don’t pay attention to kids in the street. They’re focused on what they’re doing and where they’re going and possibly on the text message they just got on their phone. Humans being humans. So the kids have to be the ones to pay attention to cars and get out of the way.

Thus, we’ve been warning the kids about moving to the side of the road so they don’t get hit and my kid equates that to figuring out how to lay perfectly flat as an alternative to actually moving out of the way.

Of course, I told him those types of things only happen in the movies with professional stunt people and professional drivers on a professionally crafted course designed for maximum safety. So no, son, you could not lay perfectly flat to avoid getting hit by a car.

He says, “Well, God could do it.”

This seems to be a running theme with both of my kids. Possibly all kids who are just beginning to understand God. They know all things are possible with God and they know superheros can do some pretty cool stuff. Thus, God can do what superheros do.

Only in real life.

And I can’t really argue against it.

At least not with any absolute certainty. God COULD make a person perfectly flat so they don’t get hit by the car. It’s more likely He would put a person at the exact right place in the exact right moment to yell for you to get out of the way or even grab you back towards the side of the road.

But likely is not fun. Likely is forgettable. Likely is possible. Likely is boring.

And so we tend to overlook the likely miracles because they didn’t look more like superhero stunts.

Strep throat made it’s disastrous way through our family this past Christmas. It was a particularly evil strain of the thing I would not wish on my worst enemy. Although my jeans did fit much looser it was not at all worth it. I’ll keep my five pounds, thankyouverymuch.

My daughter caught it first but we managed to get her to the urgent care before leaving town for Alabama. I woke up with it on Christmas morning when zero urgent care centers were open.

We tried one of those online doc things but my husband told her I had a cough, which was totally true. However, I’d had a cough for several days as part of a runny nose situation so it had nothing to do with the strep throat. But the cough was the outlying symptom making the person on the other end of the phone question my own self-diagnosis.

We ended up calling my primary physician’s office back in Texas hoping the on-call doctor would be available. He did call back and this time, I talked to him and convinced him the cough was separate from the strep and I really did need some antibiotics and not a flu test.

Antibiotics were called in.

Not long ago strep throat, and it’s nasty sister, Scarlet Fever, killed people. In the early 20th century, it was the leading cause of death in children. Now we head to the local doctor, endure the throat swab, call a pharmacy, and take bubblegum tasting medicine for ten days.

Could God whisper and the strep bacteria disappear completely? Absolutely. And its entirely possible He does just that in places all over the world where CVS and Walgreens aren’t on every single corner. But so far in our family, we get medicine.

Amoxicillin is the likely miracle.

God has been providing likely miracles since the very beginning. Leviticus, everyone’s least favorite book of the Bible, teaches God’s people how to prepare food, when to replace bowls, which parts of the animal to eat and which parts not to eat. Each rule a protective order over His creation.

Helmets, seatbelts, clean water, antibacterial soap, apartments and houses warm from the cold, well-prepared food, even the traffic on your commute making you late for work some days. All modern likely miracles. All God’s protection over us.

I’ve seen God do plenty of superhero, unlikely miracles too but in my every day, ordinary, eating, sleeping, shooing-kids-to-the-side-of-the-road life, it’s the likely miracles I often forget.

Thank you, Father, for the likely, every day overlooked miracles. We know You can do anything but we forget You have already done everything.