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Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Scene of Miracle

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Ravi Z

The 1748 essay “Of Miracles” by David Hume was influential in leading the charge against the miraculous, thoughts that were later sharpened (though also later recanted) by Antony Flew. Insisting the laws of a natural world incompatible with the supernatural, the new atheists continue to weigh in on the subject today. With them, many Christian philosophers and scientists, who are less willing to define miracle as something that must break the laws of nature, join the conversation with an opposing gusto. Physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne, for instance, suggests that miracles are not violations of the laws of nature but rather “exploration of a new regime of physical experience.”(1)

The possibility or impossibility of the miraculous fills books, debates, and lectures. What it does not fill is that moment when a person finds herself—rationally or otherwise—crying out for intervention, for help and assurance, indeed, for the miraculous. “For most of us” writes C.S. Lewis, “the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model. Removing mountains can wait.”(2) To this I would simply add that often prayer is both: both the anguished cry of Gethsemane—”please, take this from me”—prayed at the foot of an impossible mountain.

Whether this moment comes beside a hospital bed, a failing marriage, a grave injustice, or debilitating struggle, we seem almost naturally inclined in some way to cry out for an intervening factor, something or someone beyond the known laws of A + B that sit defiantly in front of us. For my own family that moment came with cancer, complicated by well-intentioned commands to believe without doubt that God was going to take it away. When death took it away instead, like many others in our situation, our faith in miracles—and the God who gives them—were equally devastated.

In the throes of that heart-wrenching scene, every time I closed my eyes to pray, the vision of an empty throne filled my mind. It was something like the vision of Isaiah in the temple, only there was no robe and no body filling anything.(3) My prayers seemed to be given not a resounding “no,” but a non-answer, a cold, agonizing silence, which was also very much an answer. It was only years after the scene of my failed prayers for the miraculous that I was physically startled, again like Isaiah, at the thought that the throne was empty because the one who fills it had stepped down to sit beside us as we cried.

Such a miracle wasn’t the one we were hoping for, and yet, years now after the sting of death, the incarnational hope of a God who comes near—in life, in suffering, even unto the grave—is inarguably the miracle far more profound. I don’t fully know why in the midst of our pain we felt alone and abandoned. Perhaps our eyes were too focused on the scene of the miracle we wanted, such that no other could be seen. ”God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when He catches us, as it were, off our guard,” writes C.S. Lewis. ”Our preparations to receive [God] sometimes have the opposite effect. Doesn’t Charles Williams say somewhere that ‘the altar must often be built in one place in order that the fire from heaven may descend somewhere else‘?”(4)

And this somewhere else, the place that catches us off-guard, is maybe even quite often right in front of us, near but unnoticed, miraculous but missed. In the words of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, “I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes. I think the concept of transcendence is based on a misreading of creation. With all respect to heaven, the scene of miracle is here, among us.”(5)

What if we were to start looking, not for miraculous signs and antepasts from beyond, but for a closer scene of miracle, for invitations to explore that new regime of physical existence brought about by the Incarnation, for foretastes of a banquet to which we are invited even today. Miracle and mystery may well be plainly before our eyes. For of course, Christianity is the story of the great Miracle, the story of the God-Man coming not where we expected, but where we needed him most. Like the kingdom itself and the Christ who came to announce it, the scene of miracle may be nearer than we think.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) John Polkinghorne, Faith, Science and Understanding (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 59.

(2) C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer (San Diego: Harcourt, 1992), 60.

(3) See Isaiah 6.

(4) Lewis, 117.

(5) Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 243.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Work of the Invisible

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Ravi Z

At any given moment during any time of the year, were you to visit my home, you would find a stack of books on the nightstand beside my bed. Not only do I have stacks of books by my bed, but my office desk is a maze of books.  One trail consists of current research, another devotional material, and still another biography and history. Generally, these books represent my varied interests of study. But recently, a new pile of books has emerged amidst the others; I’ve begun collecting books on science, and specifically on physics.

Now for those who love science, and particularly physics, you might wonder why I wouldn’t have a library dedicated to the subject. But for those who, like me, didn’t go far beyond biology, you might think me crazy, or masochistic, or both.

Physics in its simplest definition is the study of matter, energy, and the interaction between them.(1) Physicists are concerned with the “stuff” that makes up the universe as well as with questions concerning the beginning of the universe, and the building blocks of matter. As such, they are often concerned with elements so small that they cannot be seen even with the aid of the most powerful microscope.  John Polkinghorne, quantum physicist and Anglican priest, explains, “We now know that atoms themselves are made out of still smaller constituents (quarks, gluons, and electrons….we do not see quarks directly, but their existence is indirectly inferred).”  While physicists can only see, as it were, the “shadow” of these tiny realities of matter, they point to and indeed make up materials all around us. I cannot see them, but I trust they are there and at work when I sit down on my office chair each day.

My interest in physics began by considering this particular statement from Hebrews 11:1: “Faith is…the conviction of things not seen.” What a complex and seemingly paradoxical statement about the nature of faith! How can we have a conviction in things that are beyond our senses, beyond our perception and understanding? Can we really sustain conviction in that which is beyond our experiential circumstances?

Writing long before modern physics, the apostle Paul wrote that “what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot is eternal…for we walk by faith not by sight” (2 Corinthians 4:18, 5:7). Like the quantum physicists who affirm the existence of gluons even though they cannot be directly observed, only inferred, the conviction of faith is the ability to see through tangible circumstances to the spiritual realities behind them. Perhaps it is a form of wisdom and insight. For the apostle Paul also insists that there is grace and strength in weakness and a certain kind of wisdom that is found in both the foolishness of the cross and in the suffering Christ. It is, as Jesus instructed, a blessing and joy that is found among those who weep. All these offer the opportunity, for those who “see through a mirror dimly,” to be bound to a concrete reality in God (1 Corinthians 13:12).

In this sense, then, the conviction of faith sometimes calls us to go beyond reason and tangible knowledge to wisdom. And when suffering or difficulty comes, faith calls beyond a desire for ease and comfort to embrace endurance. The writer of Hebrews names a whole cast of characters known through Israel’s history who endured in faith, endured even when the promise was not received or seen, even when they were “tortured, mocked, scourged, stoned, imprisoned, sawn in two, killed with the sword, impoverished afflicted and ill-treated” (Hebrews 11:35-38). These were individuals of whom the world was not worthy, the writer tells us. They were able to see beyond their circumstances to a spiritual reality. They saw there is something at work in the invisible.

The “conviction of things not seen” is the substance of faith. It is the attention to those spiritual realities that are the true substance behind the circumstances of our daily lives. The conviction of faith is the ability to see beyond the finite to the infinite—in much the same way as physicists have discovered the infinite world of sub-atomic particles. Those invisible particles provide the essential structure for what we see all around us.

In the classic story of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery writes of a little fox who promises to reveal the secret of life to the young boy in the story. When the secret is finally revealed it is this: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”(3) Likewise, faith sees what cannot always be seen with the eye. It is the conviction of spiritual truths that give substance to reality.

Margaret Manning is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.

(1) See physics.org.

(2) John Polkinghorne, Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion (London: SPCK, 2005), 3.

(3) Antoine de Saint-Exupery as cited by Thomas Long, Interpretation: Hebrews (Philadelphia: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997), 114.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Scene of Miracle

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Ravi Z

The 1748 essay “Of Miracles” by David Hume was influential in leading the charge against the miraculous, thoughts that were later sharpened (though also later recanted) by Antony Flew. Insisting the laws of a natural world incompatible with the supernatural, the new atheists continue to weigh in on the subject today. With them, many Christian philosophers and scientists, who are less willing to define miracle as something that must break the laws of nature, join the conversation with an opposing gusto. Physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne, for instance, suggests that miracles are not violations of the laws of nature but rather “exploration of a new regime of physical experience.”(1)

The possibility or impossibility of the miraculous fills books, debates, and lectures. What it does not fill is that moment when a person finds herself—rationally or otherwise—crying out for intervention, for help and assurance, indeed, for the miraculous. “For most of us” writes C.S. Lewis, “the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model. Removing mountains can wait.”(2) To this I would simply add that often prayer is both: both the anguished cry of Gethsemane—”please, take this from me”—prayed at the foot of an impossible mountain.

Whether this moment comes beside a hospital bed, a failing marriage, a grave injustice, or debilitating struggle, we seem almost naturally inclined in some way to cry out for an intervening factor, something or someone beyond the known laws of A + B that sit defiantly in front of us. For my own family that moment came with cancer, complicated by well-intentioned commands to believe without doubt that God was going to take it away. When death took it away instead, like many others in our situation, our faith in miracles—and the God who gives them—were equally devastated.

In the throes of that heart-wrenching scene, every time I closed my eyes to pray, the vision of an empty throne filled my mind. It was something like the vision of Isaiah in the temple, only there was no robe and no body filling anything.(3) My prayers seemed to be given not a resounding “no,” but a non-answer, a cold, agonizing silence, which was also very much an answer. It was only years after the scene of my failed prayers for the miraculous that I was physically startled, again like Isaiah, at the thought that the throne was empty because the one who fills it had stepped down to sit beside us as we cried.

Such a miracle wasn’t the one we were hoping for and some may scoff at the notion of calling it such, and yet, years now after the sting of death, the incarnational hope of a God who comes near—in life, in suffering, even unto the grave—is inarguably the miracle far more profound. I don’t fully know why in the midst of our pain we felt alone and abandoned. Perhaps our eyes were too focused on the scene of the miracle we wanted, such that no other could be seen. ”God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when He catches us, as it were, off our guard,” writes C.S. Lewis. ”Our preparations to receive [God] sometimes have the opposite effect. Doesn’t Charles Williams say somewhere that ‘the altar must often be built in one place in order that the fire from heaven may descend somewhere else‘?”(4)

And this somewhere else, the place that catches us off-guard, is maybe even quite often right in front of us, near but unnoticed, miraculous but missed. In the words of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, “I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes. I think the concept of transcendence is based on a misreading of creation. With all respect to heaven, the scene of miracle is here, among us.”(5)

What if we were to start looking, not for miraculous signs and antepasts from beyond, but for a closer scene of miracle, for invitations to explore that new regime of physical existence brought about by the Incarnation, for foretastes of a banquet to which we are invited even today. Miracle and mystery may well be plainly before our eyes. For of course, Christianity is the story of the great Miracle, the story of the God-Man coming not where we expected, but where we needed him most. Like the kingdom itself and the Christ who came to announce it, the scene of miracle may be nearer than we think.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) John Polkinghorne, Faith, Science and Understanding (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 59.

(2) C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer (San Diego: Harcourt, 1992), 60.

(3) See Isaiah 6.

(4) Lewis, 117.

(5) Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 243.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Unseen Substance

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At any given moment during any time of the year, were you to visit my home, you would find a stack of books on the nightstand beside my bed. Generally, these books represent my varied interests of study: gardening, theology, psychology, and current events. But recently, a new pile of books has sprung up on my nightstand. I’ve begun collecting books on physics.

Now, for those who love science, and particularly physics, this comes as no surprise. Why wouldn’t I have already accumulated a library full of physics books? But for those who, like me, didn’t graduate beyond basic biology, you might think me crazy, or masochistic, or both.

Whatever the case, my interest in physics began by considering this particular statement from Hebrews 11:1: “Faith is…the conviction of things not seen.” What a complex and seemingly paradoxical statement about the nature of faith! How can we have a conviction in things that are beyond our senses, beyond our perception and understanding? Moreover, how do we maintain the conviction of faith in the absence of concrete evidence? Can we really sustain conviction in that which is beyond our conscious experience of the world?

Physics in its simplest definition is the study of matter and how it works.(1) Physicists are concerned with the material and the energy makes up the universe. As such, the discipline of physics deals with elements so small that they cannot be seen even with the aid of the most powerful microscope. John Polkinghorne, physicist and Anglican priest, explains, “We now know that atoms themselves are made out of still smaller constituents (quarks, gluons, and electrons….we do not see quarks directly, but their existence is indirectly inferred).”  While physicists can only see, as it were, an indirect inference to these tiny realities of matter, they point to and indeed make up matter and energy all around us. I cannot see them, nor do I contemplate their existence on a day to day basis; but I trust they are there and at work when I sit down on my office chair each day!

In the same way, the Christian scriptures affirm that faith discerns the substance behind the often murky shadows of our reality. Indeed, the discipline of faith is to train one to have a different kind of sight. The apostle Paul wrote that “what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot is eternal…for we walk by faith not by sight” (2 Corinthians 4:18, 5:7). The conviction of faith, therefore, is the ability to see through our circumstances to the spiritual realities behind them. The grace and strength promised in weakness, for example, the wisdom that is found in the foolishness of the cross and in the suffering Christ, or the blessing and joy that is found among those who weep, all bind us to a concrete reality in God even while we “see through a mirror dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). It is an eternal reality experienced in the midst of our temporal lives.

In this sense, then, the conviction of faith calls us to go beyond certainty to wisdom.  As Scottish author George MacDonald once noted; “Men [sic] accept a thousand things without proof everyday, and a thousand things may be perfectly true and have no proof.  But if a man [sic] cannot be sure of a thing, does that automatically mean it is false?” (3) Indeed, all kinds of assumptions are made each and every day—that my chair won’t fail, or my car will get me from one place to another without injury, or I will see my loved ones again at the end of the day—without any certainty or proof.

Perhaps the conviction of faith seems more tenuous when suffering comes. The writer of Hebrews names ancient men and women who endured in faith.  They endured even when the promise was not received or seen, even when they were “tortured, mocked, scourged, stoned, imprisoned, sawn in two, killed with the sword, impoverished afflicted and ill-treated” (Hebrews 11:35-38). These were the ones of whom the world was not worthy, the writer tells us. They saw beyond their circumstances to that eternal reality.  They saw there is something greater than comfort or ease in this world, and they held on—however tenuously—to faith.

The “conviction of things not seen” is the substance of faith. It is the attention to those seemingly immaterial realities that are the true substance behind the circumstances of our daily lives. The conviction of faith is the ability to see in the disparate threads of our lives a beautiful garment, a useful quilt, or a magnificent tapestry. The conviction of faith is the ability to see beyond the finite to the infinite—in much the same way as physicists have discovered the infinite world of sub-atomic particles. Those invisible particles form an intricate tapestry of essential structure for everything that we see around us.

In the classic story of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery writes of a little fox who promises to reveal the secret of life to the young boy in the story. When the secret is finally revealed it is this: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”(4) In a similar manner, faith sees what cannot be ascertained by chasing after certainty.  Rather, faith offers the conviction of what is yet unseen as the substance of reality.

Margaret Manning is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.

(1) From physics.org

(2) John Polkinghorne, Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion (London: SPCK, 2005), 3.

(3) George MacDonald cited in Michael R. Phillips, Knowing the Heart of God (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 1990), 9.

(4) Antoine de Saint-Exupery as cited by Thomas Long, Interpretation: Hebrews (Philadelphia: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997), 114.