Medical miracles are common enough that most doctors have encountered them and many people can give an account of something that happened to them or someone they knew. Prayer is now an acknowledged part of treatment for many physicians; you even see it advertised on television. People who are ill often hope for supernatural intervention to restore them to health.
If good things happen that can't be explained in natural terms, the event qualifies as a miracle. There have been accounts of such things all through history, and modern technology makes it easier to document them. In the old days, leprosy disappearing, the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, and paralyzed people walking were proof of supernatural intervention. Nowadays, a CAT scan that shows a tumor which disappears without treatment is considered conclusive validation.
Every religion has its miraculous elements, although the approach may be different. Christians believe that Jesus performed many acts during His life that fall into this category. He fed five and later four thousand men (including many more women and children) with a small amount of donated food. He healed withered limbs, leprosy, blindness, and mental illness (demon possession), and even raised the dead.
For Christians and Muslims, a miracle is an act of God. It may come through human agency - the laying on of hands or by prayer and fasting - but the power to heal, deliver, and revive belongs to God. For Buddhists, the ability to do supernatural things resides in the person who taps into innate power through profound meditation and training. Other religions bring their own shades of meaning to the miraculous.
Those without belief dispute medical miracles. They claim wrong diagnosis when tumors disappear and cancers go away. They say that survival in seemingly impossible conditions is lucky accident. However, doctors and nurses who face illness every day more often than not allow for miracles. They don't deny that something unexpected has happened.
The news media love to bring incredible stories to us. A man survives a knife through his heart, another falls more than forty stories and recovers, a young child is under water for forty minutes but is revived with faculties intact, another is buried in sand for even longer but is OK despite being struck in the head by the backhoe digging for his body. Who can explain such things as rational, business as usual, or simple luck?
Some people think that even the miraculous can be explained by natural causes. They say that the human body can heal itself, that people can do great things when the need is desperate, and that witnesses are gullible if they think they have seen a miracle. There's another way to look at this. The intricacy and adaptability of the human body is miraculous in itself. Perhaps only a divine being could have achieved such harmony in nature and success in life.
We all can take comfort in the medical miracles that happen every day. No one likes having no recourse except pain and suffering when illness or injury strikes. When there may be a miracle in the future, there is always hope. And furthermore, to most of us, a miracle evokes help and hope that is out of this world.
If good things happen that can't be explained in natural terms, the event qualifies as a miracle. There have been accounts of such things all through history, and modern technology makes it easier to document them. In the old days, leprosy disappearing, the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, and paralyzed people walking were proof of supernatural intervention. Nowadays, a CAT scan that shows a tumor which disappears without treatment is considered conclusive validation.
Every religion has its miraculous elements, although the approach may be different. Christians believe that Jesus performed many acts during His life that fall into this category. He fed five and later four thousand men (including many more women and children) with a small amount of donated food. He healed withered limbs, leprosy, blindness, and mental illness (demon possession), and even raised the dead.
For Christians and Muslims, a miracle is an act of God. It may come through human agency - the laying on of hands or by prayer and fasting - but the power to heal, deliver, and revive belongs to God. For Buddhists, the ability to do supernatural things resides in the person who taps into innate power through profound meditation and training. Other religions bring their own shades of meaning to the miraculous.
Those without belief dispute medical miracles. They claim wrong diagnosis when tumors disappear and cancers go away. They say that survival in seemingly impossible conditions is lucky accident. However, doctors and nurses who face illness every day more often than not allow for miracles. They don't deny that something unexpected has happened.
The news media love to bring incredible stories to us. A man survives a knife through his heart, another falls more than forty stories and recovers, a young child is under water for forty minutes but is revived with faculties intact, another is buried in sand for even longer but is OK despite being struck in the head by the backhoe digging for his body. Who can explain such things as rational, business as usual, or simple luck?
Some people think that even the miraculous can be explained by natural causes. They say that the human body can heal itself, that people can do great things when the need is desperate, and that witnesses are gullible if they think they have seen a miracle. There's another way to look at this. The intricacy and adaptability of the human body is miraculous in itself. Perhaps only a divine being could have achieved such harmony in nature and success in life.
We all can take comfort in the medical miracles that happen every day. No one likes having no recourse except pain and suffering when illness or injury strikes. When there may be a miracle in the future, there is always hope. And furthermore, to most of us, a miracle evokes help and hope that is out of this world.
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