Miracle

Many people, especially atheists and agnostics, believe that God no longer speaks to people, as He is alleged to have done throughout the days of the Old Testament and New Testament, when such men as Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Peter, Paul, and Mary (well, she was a woman, not a man, of course) were His buddies. However, many of those who do believe in God also believe that He speaks to them, today, just as in times long past, whether through circumstances, visions, signs, or miracles. He may decide to make the hands of a statue of Jesus bleed or show an outline or an image of the Virgin, as appears here, in the middle of a split-open geode. The eyes or brow of a sculpture of the Virgin may also bleed. (God, it seems, has a fetish for blood.)
==Divine Revelation==
Laypersons, pastors, priests, and theologians debate the possible meanings of such statues, often failing to reach a consensus of opinion as to what these miracles mean. However, God's more secular messages are easier to understand. For example, when a Baptist minister couldn't decide, even after many hours of fervent prayer, whether he should purchase a new automobile, this image appeared in the sky:
The answer seemed clear. God wanted him to buy the automobile. Pastor Dan has come to expect miracles from God, and the Lord has not let him down. God tells Pastor Dan exactly where to go and what to do every waking moment by creating images, stains, or patterns in tree bark, water, sand, rock formations, clouds, hillsides, pastures, floor tiles, balloon animals, wallpaper, bathroom sinks, and other natural and manmade objects.
Pastor Dan, who served as a Marine before being born again and becoming a minister, says that looking for signs from God as to what to do at every moment of his waking life has made life "divinely easy," because "it's not Bill O'Reilly who's looking out for me; it's God Almighty. It's like being back in the Marine Corps and being told, every second, where to go and what to do."
==Additional Miracles==
Since his first vision, Pastor Dan has had many other moments of mystical enlightenment. "Miracles abound," he exclaims "for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear."
===Wardrobe Assistance===
The pastor gave several additional examples of how miraculous signs have guided his daily activities. "I couldn't decide between a leather jacket and a cotton T-shirt, and I asked God for guidance. As I turned the corner, heading for the local haberdashery, I saw a sign with that Canadian chick, Pamela Anderson, half naked, on it--that got my attention, let me tell you! And the sign said something about rejecting fur--well, I figured the message applied to leather just as much, so I knew God was telling me to go for the cotton."
===Travel Arrangements===
Another time, Pastor Dan confides, he was trying to decide on where to vacation during a two-week leave he took from his clerical duties. "Should I stay home? Go to Hawaii? Travel abroad? I just couldn't decide, so I said, 'God, it's your call.'" The minister went about his daily business, preparing a sermon that he hoped would "scare the hell out of sinners" in his congregation, and forgot all about his vacation destination. "Once I put something in God's hands, I leave it up to Him." A few days later, the clergyman says, "God had His answer: I was to go to Tahiti and live among the bare-breasted natives. God is good, brother! God is good!" He knew that Tahiti was God's will for his vacation, because 'I was flipping through this travel magazine, and an ad, featuring a bare-breasted Tahiti native woman, just leaped off the page at me, the way scriptures sometimes do."
===Dating Service===
"Protestant preachers are allowed to marry," Pastor Dan pointed out, "which is mainly why I chose a Protestant denomination; the Reformation had only a little to do with my decision. Anyway, I decided that it was time to be fruitful and multiply, in the Biblical sense, so I needed a wife." He joined "the dating service of God's choice, and corresponded with two women, Marcia and Bertha, neither of whom had any pictures of herself available, which seemed suspicious, but no other ladies had responded to my ad." When he judged the time had come to make a choice, he says, "I didn't know which way to go. Marcia's name sounded like it belonged to a beautiful young woman, whereas Bertha's name sounded as if it came attached to an ungly old cow. But what if I were wrong? What if Satan had influenced the women's parents to pick those names just so he could trip me up when it came time for me to marry? I needed God's help. You can imagine my chagrin when He prompted me to pick Bertha! God, after all, is a Spirit, and He's not all that concerned, as I am, with a woman's external appearance. To Him, it's the heart that matters." Nevertheless, despite his trepidation, he chose Bertha, "and, as you can see, now that they've each sent me a picture, God is good!"
===Financial Advice===
Pastors are not paid well, and their retirement benefits are terrible, according to Pastor Dan. He confesses that he is incompetent at financial matters. As a result, he admits, he is “even more dependent on God’s miraculous guidance” than he is in other areas of his life, such as selecting toilet paper, deciding what item to purchase from a vending machine, or determining whether to neuter his pet dog. His financial strategy in picking stocks: “I close my eyes and stab the stock listings with my finger, after saying a prayer to invoke God’s aid, of course.” Does this approach pay off? “Here’s the stock I picked,” he said, poking a printout of the stock’s performance over the past several months. “What do you think? Is God good, or what?”
Category:Religion
Wobbly Ontology
The Catholic Church defines as miraculous any phenomenon that is not explicable in terms of our understanding of nature. Insofar as the Catholic Church classifies homosexual acts as immoral by virtue of the fact that they are unnatural, it would seem that they also fall under the same category as miracles- that is, as phenomena inexplicable and/ or unintelligible given our understanding of the natural order of things. Hence anal intercourse is miraculous. Just a thought.
de:Wunder
fr:Miracle
it:Miracolo
sk:Zázrak