The world's major religions share a small world.
For Christians, Easter is certainly a time to celebrate miracles. This annual religious feast honors the crucifixion and celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
For Jews, this is also a time to celebrate miracles. In this case a seven-day festival commemorating the Hebrews escape from enslavement in Egypt. In the story of the Exodus, the Bible tells that God brought a series of ten plagues upon the Egyptians before Pharaoh released his Israelite slaves. In the tenth plague the firstborn sons of Egypt all died. The Hebrews were instructed to mark the doorposts of their homes with the blood of a spring lamb and, upon seeing this, the spirit of the Lord passed over these homes, hence the name “Passover.”
Every faith – Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and many more - has its own special times of the year in which it celebrates the mystical connection between humankind and its creator. There are some who believe that everything we see on Earth and in the vast cosmos, in which our planet is merely a speck of discarded stardust, is simply the result of various matter interacting and then there are others who see a touch of the in everything that surrounds us.
At this time of year, when we celebrate the mystery of faith it seems appropriate to pause and take note of the miracles that occur everyday in our “ordinary” little world.
Everything in life unfolds in stages. A seed cannot turn into a tree until it is ready.
One can look back on the relatively brief history of humankind and see how we as a species have unfolded. We go about our lives everyday with giving little notice or thought to the practical miracles we see all around us. New methods of healing disease, and relieving pain have become commonplace. Communicating globally on a level that just two decades ago appeared to be the stuff of fantasy is evidence of an everyday miracle. Einstein once noted that ideas that took him years of work to develop would one day be comprehended by school children. And so our knowledge unfolds as we grow along with it.
Our own capacity to perform miracles grew much greater two centuries ago when people started to hunger for individual freedom. Governments and churches could no longer hold all power and all knowledge. Ordinary people began demanding the right to use the intellectual capital of the known world. And that is an idea that has flourished ever since.
Today we still see many ways in which religion has been used to pull humanity apart as opposed to bringing us together. As we grow in our capacity to connect with each other we constantly see that we are not really all that different. We want loving and lasting relationships with one life partner, with our parents, with our children, with our siblings, and the rest of our families. We would rather live in harmony with our neighbor than live in discord.
Some believe that we are doomed to forever be in conflict with each other. But on this day and at this time of year when we celebrate the renewal of life, we affirm our common belief that not only is our world a place of miracles, but new miracles are unfolding everyday. The closer one comes to the truth about faith the more one realizes that all religions embrace the same underlying message: that we are the children of a loving creator and we are blessed with the capacity to do great good when we follow the good that is within us.
Here’s to a time of building a more peaceful world in age of miracles, when our common humanity is embraced and celebrated by all of God’s children.
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