Miracle or Coincidence? Strange But True!

 We use the word 'miracle' in so many different contexts. The turnaround for devastated and defeated Japan after World War Two was termed 'an economic miracle' for example. But I'm not referring to every use of the word, rather to the old original meaning of the word. Maybe there really is such a thing as a miracle. I guess there are some things we cannot relate to unless we have been directly involved.

My family were not religious. We would go to weddings and funerals, but otherwise we didn't attend church. Grandmother did, but then again she was getting older and was maybe hedging her bets for the inevitable appointment with the Grim Reaper! Mum, Dad, my sister and I went out for the day on Sundays. Dad always said it was 'family day.' We were all happy with that. The choice was of a day out with Mum & Dad or sitting in a huge cold building with Grandma and her friends singing mournful dirges? No, it wasn't a difficult choice.

But life has its ways of challenging our values and beliefs sometimes. The first miracle (as I will call it) occurred was when I became seriously ill at the age of seven. I had been unwell for some months with recurring throat and ear infections when I quite suddenly became critical. My condition was so serious that there was no doubt that I would die if something wasn't done very quickly. I was vomiting blood and getting very weak. The doctors didn't know exactly what was wrong and didn't know how to treat it. They tried a number of things but the treatments had no effect. Meanwhile I was slipping away. All I knew was that my Mother seemed to be crying an awful lot. My Grandmother was praying for me and even though my parents didn't attend church I wouldn't be surprised if they too joined in at this time of crisis. Experienced doctors had tried everything they could think of and everyone was now getting seriously worried that I was going to die very soon.

But just as things were looking very bleak, the senior GP at our practice sent her new recruit to see me. She had only just qualified and had very limited experience. However, the junior member of the team had an idea. During her training she had seen an example of a very rare blood disease with similar symptoms. She suggested calling in a specialist consultant whom she had met, an expert who knew how to treat the disease. Her suspicions were confirmed. The hospital began to treat me daily with huge doses of antibiotics and they kept me in hospital for a month. Full recovery took three years, but against all the odds I survived. It was a miracle.

Now when we think about it, what are the chances of a junior doctor coming from hundreds of miles away being able to spot a very rare disease (one that the experts had missed) just in the nick of time before it claimed the life of a child? So few doctors had come across the condition that it was almost unknown. Some might understandably want to explain it away as 'coincidence', but to me, and to my family, we always said it was some kind of miracle - a miracle combining knowledge, science and something of the unexplained too.

The second 'miracle' happened to me at the age of eighteen. I was heading home on my beloved trials motorcycle on a very snowy day. The main roads had mainly been cleared by snow ploughs but the side roads were awful. As I turned into the side road where I Um Curso em Milagres Online Videos   with my parents I lost grip. My trials bike with off-road tyres was better in snow than a road bike, but I was probably going too fast with typical youthful over confidence. I slid right across to the     side of the road and fell off directly in front of an oncoming bus. It was so close that you could see the look of horror on the driver's face! There was a feeling of impending doom inside of me as the bus was almost upon me. To this day I don't know how the bus avoided me, but the next thing I saw was the rear view of the bus heading down the road. I was alive and unharmed, and my bike wasn't damaged! It was as if the bus had been lifted up and carried over me, then placed down carefully to carry on with its journey. How on earth did the guy miss me? I really don't know, but what I do know is that I started listening to my good friend Dave, a keen church-goer who had been 'on my case' for years. After this, I felt Dave deserved a bit more of my attention than I had given him previously.

By the time I reached 21 I had started going along with Dave to help with the youth group at his church. This is where it gets really, really weird! My father was not a church goer and all I knew was that he had named me after a close friend who had died at age 21. My parents had not moved around a lot so they lived just a few miles from where my father was born. On the odd occasion they (or we as a family) did attend church it would be our local Church of England, as that was where Grandmother went and she was credited with a little sense even if she was religious! My parents had never really told me anything about the guy I was named after, all I knew was that he was a close friend of my father who had died at age 21. However, once I took on the role of helping to lead the teenage group at the Baptist church, I became better known there and I was told an amazing story. A middle aged lady in the church had a brother who attended the church 30 years earlier. He had helped to look after the teenagers, just as I now did. He had the same Christian name as me. My name (Ralph) is an unusual name in England and so when his sister, who was still at the church 30 years on, realised who I was, the story came out and she remembered my Father. So, firstly I had unexpectedly turned up to help with the youth group at this church, secondly I was named after a guy who did exactly the same job 30 years earlier, and thirdly I had taken on this role at the very same age he died. Now is that strange or what? Was this just another coincidence? Surely you could not have engineered the situation if you tried. To me, at least, this was miracle number three. My father did not want to go that far, but he was a little stuck for words when I told him what I had discovered.

I thought my story was strange, but I recently came across this story, which is even more weird than mine. Joseph Aigner was a well-known portrait painter in 19th century Austria. Aigner suffered from severe bouts of depression and attempted suicide on three occasions. His first attempt was at the age of just 18 when he tried to hang himself, but he was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a Capuchin monk who talked him out of it. Then, when he was 22, Aigner tried to hang himself again. Once again his attempt was thwarted and his life was saved by the same monk! Eight years later, the painter was sentenced to death for apparently treasonable political activities. Amazingly, his life was saved for a third time by the intervention of the same monk! Finally, at the age of 68, a very depressed Aiger succeeded in committing suicide by shooting himself with a pistol. This time the monk did not turn up to intercede, but he did turn up to conduct the funeral service!