"Wonder of Wonders"

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Blessed are you, Lord, our God, Ruler of the Universe
Who performed miracles for our ancestors in those ancient times in this season.”

-- Blessing over Hanukkah Candles



Jules: This was Divine Intervention! You know what "divine intervention" is?

Vincent: Yeah, I think so. That means God came down from Heaven and stopped the bullets.
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Jules: Whether or not what we experienced was an According to Hoyle miracle is insignificant. What is significant is that I felt the touch of God. God got involved.”

-- Vincent (John Travolta) and Jules (Samuel L. Jackson), “Pulp Fiction” (1994, written by Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary)



What makes something a miracle? Is childbirth a miracle? It happens thousands of times every day? How can THAT be miraculous?
Well, my heart beats thousands of times each day… good thing, too, because if it didn’t I would suddenly drop…


… I’m okay!

Still, think of all the little things that are happening inside your body right now! Every breath, every lymph node, muscle, cell—all just to keep you alive long enough to finish reading this sentence!

You did it! Good job!


It’s still amazing.
Every few weeks I say the same thing…
“I can’t BELIEVE Obama is President!”

In a good way.

Like him or not… it’s pretty damn extraordinary that he’s the head honcho (technical political term) of the USA. That could be considered a miracle.

I have heard an old saying, “There are two types of people: those who think EVERYTHING is a miracle, and those who think NOTHING is a miracle.”

As is the case with almost everything, I believe the truth falls somewhere in the middle.

If you think NOTHING is a miracle, you’re probably not much fun to be around.
If you think EVERYTHING is a miracle, you’re a huge pain in the ass (“ANOTHER flavor of Ben and Jerry’s? What a miracle! Hallelujah! Oh, Almighty-- you’ve done it again!”)


The famous American rabbi/philosopher, Abraham Joshua Heschel, often said, “A miracle happened today— the sun rose.”

On a similar note, the equally-influential (at least to me) comedian Louis C.K. pointed out:

“Everything is amazing right now and nobody’s happy…
I was on an airplane… People come back from flights and they tell you their story.
And [they act like] it’s a horror story:
‘It was the worst day of my life! We didn’t BOARD for TWENTY MINUTES, then we got on the plane and they made us SIT THERE on the runway for FORTY MINUTES!’

Oh, yeah? And what happened next?
Did you FLY through the AIR-- INCREDIBLY?
Like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight?
… It’s AMAZING!... You’re flying! You’re sitting in a chair— IN THE SKY!!”

Amen.

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"Great, Miracle. Happened, Here"

-- Letter representations on the 4 sides of a dreidel (spinning top) in Israel
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