In our desperate search for miraculous answers or confirmations, we often forget that the most profound miracles are hidden in the seemingly mundane details of our lives.
Midnight. I was glued to a tube radio, searching for music on shortwave. Not just any music. The latest and greatest. LPs[1] that would make me flutter with emotion.
In the days of one-size-fits-all communism, of which I was an unwilling part at the age of 17, I sought escape in alternatives from other sources, even if they were controversial. The regime of the time was preoccupied with a monochrome, dry culture that glorified anachronistic and repressive politics. I was in total opposition, but in secret. So I wandered around on shortwave listening to my favourite oppositional, capitalist music. The sound was turned down as low as possible so as not to alarm my parents, who were also opposed to Western values. When the station lost its signal, I’d search for it until I could resume listening to the music, which wasn’t even that good. Tired from listening and searching, my hand slipped off the button.
Suddenly I entered an unearthly dream. I was conducting a choir of angels, all dressed in white, as was I. The music I was hearing and conducting was unlike anything else on earth. First, it was indescribably harmonious. Then this celestial melody came into my body, as if the only thing it was made of was ears. A peace and joy full of newness and originality entered me with a force that had no aggressiveness of imposition. Then I woke up! Dazed and breathless, I realised that compared to the music of my dream, the shortwave melodies were dark and morbid.
I didn’t excel in faithfulness. Although I came from a family of practising Christians, my experience of God was thin, almost insubstantial. Ritual prayers, church attendance in the flesh, almost completely devoid of spirit. I sang, I recited poetry, for others to hear, not for myself. And this dream came. It disturbed me. I woke up and said a true and heartfelt prayer: “Lord, if you exist, give me this dream again!” And he gave it to me again. In the same conductor’s role. In the same white clothes. With the same indescribable melodic scenery. How can you forget such a theophany? Since then I’ve been looking for… miracles!
Unfulfilled expectations
So He exists! And He has great things to give me! If you ask Him, He answers and gives! I asked Him again for the dream and He gave it to me. Do you see what I mean? It opens up a life of supernatural requests and answers from the One who can do all things. I felt that God wanted me to live a Christian life of obedience to Him. I became more active in church. I began to pray in public. I commented on some Bible texts, much to the delight of my parents. I made it a habit to read from the Bible as a currency for what I needed to ask in prayer.
But then: “Lord, increase my muscles, which are too weak, and give me a more robust constitution, so that no one will dare to humiliate me!” And He did not! I asked Him, not just once, when I was hitchhiking, to send me a car in five minutes to take me to my destination, and He didn’t give it to me. I mean, He did it after three hours in the rain or in the sun. That didn’t count! I begged Him to create a romantic atmosphere and bring me a girl I had a secret crush on, but it backfired. I begged Him to take away my excruciating gastritis pains on the day I felt more faithful and kind, but my prayer was ignored. I asked Him to get me into the college I wanted, but to no avail. I got into a technical college, which I did not like very much. I asked Him to do me the favour of sending me to do my military service in a unit where I wouldn’t have to do heavy work, but He didn’t seem to hear me. I ended up in the army as an engineer, which meant construction work. My parents didn’t have the means to fulfil some of the wishes I had when I was young. “Lord, let me find a large sum of money or a treasure so that I can save my parents from poverty and get what I think I deserve!” The answer: nothing!
I only asked Him reasonable things. If He had at least partially answered some of my crisis requests, would I not have become more faithful? I was sure He existed. But I was also confused! What is He doing with His unfathomable power? Why doesn’t He use it when I ask Him to? A sample of heavenly music doesn’t make a great believer! So back to shortwave music…
In search of the miracle of being the best
I wish I had known this in my 20s:
- The greatest miracles are not external, but internal.
- The most authentic divine experiences can happen in the most ordinary moments.
- Divine music is heard not only in dreams, but in the whispers of our hearts.
- The supernatural can be found in the ordinary, if we truly seek it.
- True faith is not built on miracles, but on the renewal of the soul.
Youth, in most of its many forms, demands an imperative: Be phenomenal! Be amazing! Wow your audience! Perform! Outshine your competitors! Be a miracle! Are you weak? Then use your skill and special fighting techniques to bring down a colossus, just like David did with Goliath in the biblical story. Are you unattractive and boring? You can befriend and marry the most beautiful girl in your known world. How? By a feat that no one else can match and that will make you an unrivalled hero. (Look at the dozens of footballers who, by playing well, have trapped girls of rare beauty in the materialistic-sentimental net). Are you poor and of questionable social status? You can become a millionaire in a few months through astonishing marketing magic.
Films with a magical vision constantly generate unbelievable dreams. They give you the hope of being what you have never been. Cartoons teem with mystery and wonder, implicitly suggesting that any child can fly by jumping from the eighth floor. The preoccupation with looking good on the outside and doing something of immense impact occupies the minds of young people with a real will to assert themselves. I was one of them!
The natural supernatural
In the Bible you will find supernatural events that will surprise and fascinate you: from creation ex nihilo[2] to temporary deviations from known laws, from the endowment with unprecedented powers to amazing healings, from prophecies to manifestations of nature specially called to express themselves in a dramatic way, and many other miracles that confer specific messages to meet urgent needs. They all speak of a Creator who wished to assert His presence and communicate His will through people who were faithful to Him and dedicated to the mission to which they were called.
Surprisingly, the Son of God Himself, who incarnated in human form to explain to us in a living way the loving character of the Godhead, did not rely on miracles. The miracles that were the expression of the phenomenal He left as proof of His divinity or of His attitude towards suffering and death, but some He even suppressed and tried to conceal. The saving faith that Jesus sought to define was not an argument to build a life according to divine demands. Genuine Christianity, built by changing corrupt human nature, is done by knowing God’s will, expressed in the revealed Word (John 1:14), which, through the Holy Spirit, works the inner miracle: the change from moral degradation to renewal of mind and heart.
This quest for change (Romans 12:2) is not a natural human preoccupation, but a supernatural work that the Creator passionately desires to bring about in the lives of those who ask Him. In the first decade of my life, self-centredness meant that I did not suppress my irascibility, illicit tastes, duplicitous behaviour or double personality. I saw these in others and continued them in myself. Later I learned that to live goodness by inspiring others to do good, to taste unconditional heavenly love, to be transparent and therefore to live moral truth in spite of material losses and a tarnished reputation, these are the fundamental miracles that are built up in secret, in a relationship of certainty with God. It is a kind of miracle of the ordinary, which we proclaim but which in the end is postponed. This is where the peace, the boundless joy, the absence of fear, and the certainty of the continuity of life beyond the sleep of death come from.
I confess that, at the age when I was most in need of the landscape of His life, I was not in tune with the Teacher of Nazareth’s fierce longing to be a beneficent source for others. Had I known Him in the right order of priorities, the good would have multiplied a thousand times and youth would have been at the height of its eloquence. Later I had to redeem the time, but I lost a lot of it, delaying my meeting with Him by sitting too long on the short waves. Now I’m taking conducting lessons from the Master of the Universe for my third meeting with the choir of angels.
George Uba is 70 years old. He is a retired pastor and founder of the “Get up and walk!” association with a special mission for people with disabilities. In his early 20s, he experienced much disappointment. It was only several years later that he experienced his closeness to God in a way that he describes as “passionate”.