Miracle

For a split second, my brother and I took it as a comic bid for a laugh. We were, after all, given to entertaining one another in a variety of ridiculous but imaginative ways, as kids are inclined to do in the absence of an ever-present screen. Our younger sister’s sudden, wild-eyed expression and overdramatic howl we received as such — that is, until we were clued-in to the cause. Her cup of hot chocolate, filled with liquid that had been boiling on the stovetop only seconds earlier, fell out of the mug after her hand had carelessly slipped, allowing the scalding water to land like lava and blanket the tender skin of her 11-year-old lap. Only a few seconds more and discoloration and blisters began to appear in large patches, leaving her with the rapid formation of severe burns.

Complicating this turn of events was our family’s location, which, as it would happen, was not the medically-privileged U.S. of A. but Ukraine, roughly a year or two since its separation from the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s and bereft of any adequate emergency care. My parents once again found themselves in a situation they were becoming familiar with over the last several months; namely, equipped only with faith in who they believed had brought them to this place and a prayer for help lifted up in trust that it would be heard, one way or another.

As my parents and another missionary couple surrounded my sister, hands placed over the painful wounds, and offered up their simple but sincere petitions, speaking respectfully but familiarly to God as if to a compassionate father, I was hastily tasked with heading to the opposite side of the city, where another missionary family resided and who was known to have an aloe vera plant — hardly a treatment option that would repair the damaged tissues or provide sustained relief, but the best we could do under the circumstances until another solution presented itself, or God, in his infinite concern, delivered a miracle.

I took the number 6 tram, alone, as a 16-year-old with only a rudimentary understanding of the Russian language (without the aid of a cell phone or tracking app, I might add) across the sprawling city of over 600,000, to the home of a fellow missionary. He and his family were the first known American evangelical missionaries in the city of Lugansk post-U.S.S.R., and his expressed wish for help in the vast metropolis in eastern Ukraine is what, in part, brought us there. In truth, it was innumerable “coincidences” that carried us there, testifying to the work of God in our obedient parents’ lives, and us, the kids, by extension. The soup to nuts story is best told by my parents, and it defies any dismissal as pure chance that we ended up where we did, and for reasons God, it would seem, intended.

I walked from the tram stop to the house, stepping inside to find him there, as I asked for a piece of the plant to return with me for my sister. He obliged, but the transaction was brief and businesslike. Relations, at this time, had become strained with this gentleman, who, in spite of pleas for assistance prior to our arrival, had shown himself to be someone who did not easily share the “spotlight” and found, perhaps to his own inexperience of working with others, that he preferred working alone. Hence, the reason we chose not terribly long after arriving to move across town. But that’s a story for another time.

I left and again boarded the tram for the return journey. By the time I arrived, it had been a couple hours or more since the accident, sufficient time for the skin to deteriorate further without a remedy, which I expected. However, the moment I stepped through the door, I was met with not a hint of despair, pain, or dismay.

My sister sat upright and in no discernable distress, the others also without concern. If I hadn’t known what had transpired, I wouldn’t have guessed, judging from the lack of any appearance of injury to her lap. It made no rational, naturalistic sense. All was well, as if it always had been. We, nonetheless, applied the aloe vera as a balm, but, it would seem, to no real purpose. My trip, though appreciated, was in vain.

My sister recounts it best:

I can remember everything, but two things immediately stand out and have stuck with me. The first is, I remember my body reacting before it really hit me. I remember thinking, “Who is screaming?” and being genuinely surprised it was me. But as soon as I knew that, the excruciating pain fully hit me. And second–and what will forever be a reminder of how powerful prayer is–feeling an immediate relief of the intense pain and literally watching my burn heal as soon as everyone started praying over me. I could not stop shaking, but there was an immediate peace and calm that came as soon as they prayed. The way the burns looked before the prayer and after was absolutely insane. And I do not have any scarring at all from it. Burns like that should have scarred me.

I missed the miracle itself, but there was little doubt in our minds that it was just that–a miracle. We accepted it not simply in faith but as fact, moving on with the day as sure as ever of God’s involvement in our family’s life. It would be only one of many encounters with God’s provision and protection, a reality to which we were becoming accustomed with the year we spent in Ukraine.

Several years later, I would read C.S. Lewis’s Miracles and find it a breath of fresh air amidst an atmosphere of agnosticism, following university study in religious academia. I hold all of my professors in high esteem, mind you, and still do, but when one is venturing out from under your parents’ faith and charting out your own, it is only natural that doubts, like weeds, can begin to creep in unnoticed when the textbooks and discussions cease to sound like Sunday School lessons and instead stretch into uncharted intellectual territory. The questions can either lead you further from faith, as often happens, or move you to struggle, as Jacob with the “angel,” limbs stubbornly locked against limbs, until he received the blessed answer he sought.

I can’t answer why few of us could say any longer we encounter such miracles in our day to day lives, other than, perhaps, we choose not to risk real obedience to see them happening all around us. For my part, my family and I know what we witnessed that day and have never had cause to doubt it. So, I’ll simply leave it here with a quote from Dostoyevsky, who voiced his opinion on the subject beautifully through one of his many characters in the book The Brothers Karamazov, suggesting that it may be nothing more than a sort of prejudice that prevents us from believing:

. . . in my opinion miracles will never confound a realist. It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and ability not to believe in miracles as well, and if a miracle stands before him as an irrefutable fact, he will sooner doubt his own senses than admit the fact. And even if he does admit it, he will admit it as a fact of nature that was previously unknown to him. In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith. Once the realist comes to believe, then, precisely because of his realism, he must also allow for miracles.