Learning to see again.

I was reading about whether or not miracles continue to happen in the world we live in today.  It seems to me that many people have the idea that most miracles are dead and that only once in a rare while will a "big" miracle happen.  Along with the idea that miracles are dead comes a loss of the sense of wonder

that many of us remember from our childhood.  So the question remains, are miracles gone? Often in our lives we will have events happen so often that they seem to be so commonplace to us and we start to take them for granted.  Every day events seem so mundane and boring that we simply forget to even think about them much any longer.   Because of the lack of excitement that we have come to equate to entertainment we gloss over the daily miracles that surround us every day.  And this is part of why we struggle to find joy and happiness in our lives.

I have been blessed to have a couple of young daughters, one is almost 3 and the other is almost 1.  I have come to recognize through their eyes the loss we have experienced in seeing the wonders that truly do surround us.  I watch as my 3 year old explores her world and am surprised at the exclamations of wonder as she sees the moon in the sky, a butterfly fluttering by, or even a bug crawling across the ground.  I watch as my 1 year old explores different foods and drinks and the excited expressions she gives as she finds new toys, hears new noises, and even gets to see her dad after a long day of work.  I often find myself giving pause and wondering what it would be like for me, as an adult, to have that same kind of wonder with the world I live in.

I imagine if we took some time to look around us at the world we live in and started giving some recognition to the many miracles that occur each day, we might start finding more joy and happiness in the world we have.  I encourage people to take some time and really think about the miracle of having clean water to drink at the push of a button.  What a miracle it is that our bodies even function as well as they do, most of the time.  Can you stop and recognize the miracles that happen each and every time we take a breath into our lungs and how we continue to sustain our lives through the transfer of oxygen and carbon dioxide?  When was the last time you stopped and looked at the various colors of a sunset and realized just what has to happen to make those colors appear?  Or even stopping to think about the miracle that life itself truly is?  

Sometimes I think of the song "Amazing Grace" where it talks about being blind.  I fear far too many of us are walking around with our eyes blinded by the complacency of life happening around us.  We take so much for granted that we seem to have missed that miracles still happen each day we are alive.  In the famous words of Louis Armstrong, "What a wonderful world" it would be if each day we could take at least a brief moment and recognize one of the many miracles that surround us.  Truly then we could say, "I once was blind, but now I see."