14 June

Fitting into the Pattern
It is therefore inaccurate to define a miracle as something that breaks the laws of Nature. It doesn't. If I knock out my pipe I alter the position of a great many atoms: in the long run, and to an infinitesimal degree, of all the atoms there are. Nature digests or assimilates this event with perfect ease and harmonises it in a twinkling with all other events. It is one more bit of raw material for the laws to apply to, and they apply. I have simply thrown one event into the general cataract of events and it finds itself at home there and conforms to all other events. If God annihilates or creates or deflects a unit of matter He has created a new situation at that point. Immediately all Nature domiciles this new situation, makes it at home in her realm, adapts all other events to it. It finds itself conforming to all the laws. If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take it over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later, a child is born. We see every day that physical nature is not in the least incommoded by the daily inrush of events from biological nature or from psychological nature. If events ever come from beyond Nature altogether, she will be no more incommoded by them. Be sure she will rush to the point where se is invaded, as the defensive forces rush to a cut in our finger, and there hasten to accommodate the new comer. The moment it enters her realm it obeys all her laws. Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern.
—from Miracles
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis
Miracles: A Preliminary Study. Copyright 1947 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1947 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Revised 1960, restored 1996 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
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June 14
Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life (13:12).
The snow fell furiously. Looking from the picture window, it was impossible even to see to the street. The wind blew the snow into great drifts, and travel had come to a standstill. Their son should have been home hours ago. He was driving in from the north, and they had hoped he would beat the storm. His mother sat transfixed by the blizzard, trying to gaze through it for some sign of her son. The father paced the room, mumbling occasionally about getting his coat and going out after him. The minutes ticked by into hours, and a tear trickled down the woman's cheek.
As darkness fell, two dim lights cut through the swirling white. A police truck pulled up in front of the house, and a young man jumped out. He ran through the front door and greeted his mother and father. His mother burst into tears, and his father grasped him in a bear-like embrace. The tense period of waiting was over, and the rejoicing began.
Waiting is never easy, but when we are anticipating something hoped for and it doesn't appear, we have to fight the disappointment, and sometimes fear. However, when our desire finally arrives, the joy is even greater. As we Christians await our eternal home, we grow more appreciative of it as time goes by. When it is finally ours, our joy will be overwhelming.
prayer: Patience is one thing I could use more of, Lord. As I look toward heaven, and long to be united with you, please fill me with your patience, and allow me to learn all I can during my earthly stay. Amen.
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