A learned psychologist recently observed
that Christ’s miracles were dubious
as signs of healing.
Whereas the blind see, the crippled walk,
all kinds of maladies resolved,
the miraculous effect is yet in doubt.
You see, he argued, there was never
a cure which entailed regeneration
of a lost limb or organ.
Never a new leg to a one-legged man,
a stump converted to an arm with fingers,
a missing eye replaced.
Even a man raised from the dead
came back as he was before,
nothing changed.
The miracle of the loaves and fishes,
the water into wine,
were of the numerous and the fluid.
The miracle did not exceed nature,
rather, conformed to it,
at least, to all appearances.
The psychologist wondered why,
and one can see his concern,
miracles should be so limited.
Though Christ walked on the waves,
it was a quasi natural event,
as Peter was to prove.
Christ, for instance, did not create money,
though a coin extracted from a fish’s mouth
paid His tax -- a miracle?
Christ used miracle to illustrate
the morality inherent
in the harmony of creation, which sin spoilt.
His power of miracle proved Christ’s power
over sin, and through faith in Him
the redemption of the sinner.
The psychologist did not count himself
a sinner, he had a reputation
to maintain as faultless.
As such, he found the biblical limitation
of Christ’s miracles the evidence
of it being non-miraculous.
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