The Real Miracle

“I’m pregnant.”

Every time I speak those words, the clouds part, trumpets sound, and the ground trembles beneath my feet.

My pregnancy is a miracle. It’s as much a miracle to me as Jesus turning the water into wine, feeding the 5,000, and hushing the storm with a word. It’s real, tangible, and solid within me - this living testimony to God’s miracle-working power.

I find myself wanting – needing, even – to share this with just about everybody I meet. When I tell people I’m pregnant, I always say we have been “trying” for eight years. I always use the world “miracle” and say “this baby is from the Lord.”

I am most often in a state of inexpressible joy, although, as you know me, I tend to try to express it anyway.

Last week, our Pastor preached on the healing of the paralytic in Matthew 9. At one point, he spoke of how, after many obstacles had been overcome, the paralytic was finally placed in front of Jesus.

There is no mention of what, if anything, the paralytic said, but Pastor suggested the paralytic might have stood silent and ashamed, being in front of pure holiness, seeing his own sinfulness reflected back to him.

And yet…Jesus comforted him and called him, “My child.” Before Jesus healed him, He did something far greater. He did something only He could do. He forgave the man his sins. Then, He healed the man, and the man walked home that night.

I imagine, at first, the man was overjoyed his physical ability that had been restored. We are, after all, only human and tend to cling to the real, the tangible, the touchable when it comes to what we appreciate.

I don’t know when it fully hit him that he had been forgiven his sins. Maybe it was right away.

Or maybe, like me, it took a while to realize that, while God had given a gift (healing to the paralytic, fertility to me), His greatest gift – the forgiveness of sins – is the one taken for granted.

I have been jumping and shouting for joy over the developing child within me. I have been attributing this miracle to God upon every opportunity. Yet, I stand convicted, because God has given me a more miraculous gift.

He has forgiven my sins! In those words there is a far greater reason for jumping and shouting and sharing with everyone I know. I have been saved!

One day the paralytic and I will stand together in glory - our miracles merely a foot note in history - as we give glory to Him who can and does give the greatest gift – the forgiveness of sin.