A Miracle

from  Here if you Need Me,  A True Story by Kate Braestrup

From Jesus, ten lepers receive a cure. "And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him."

                        Were not ten made clean? Yes. Ten were made clean.
                         But only one received a miracle.

A miracle is not defined by an event. A miracle is defined by gratitude.

......

All ten lepers were made clean; all ten went on to live whatever new life was afforded them thereby. We can be confident that all ten suffered other wounds, for life is wounding, and that all ten died, for life is also terminal. All ten have long since gone to dust and story. Sometimes the miracle is a life restored, but the restoration is always temporary. At other times, maybe most of the time, a miracle can only be the resurreciton of love beside the unchanged fact of death.

...As a mother, I pray for miracles of the most ordinary kind on their (my children's) behalf: I want their hearts to keep beating. I want them to live.

But then, a grateful heart beats in a world of miracles. If I could only speak one prayer for you, my children, it would be that your hearts would not only beat but grow ever greater in gratitude, that your lives, however long they prove to be and no matter how they end, continue to bring you miracles in abundance.