Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived at the foot of the mountains in Southern California.

She loved to play outside, and she was absolutely fascinated with the thought of playing in the snow. This little girl grew up in the Church, and she had faith that if she asked God for something, he would answer. It wasn’t a possibility – it was a certainty.

So, at the start of January, right before she was going to turn six years old, she told her mother that she was going to pray to Jesus and ask Him to make it snow on her birthday. What she didn’t know at the time was that snow, even where they lived, was extremely rare. So rare, in fact, that her mother’s heart dropped when she heard what her little girl was going to pray for. Because in her mind, all she could see was her little girl waking up to a snowless morning and wondering why Jesus never answered, or if He was even listening at all.

Fast forward to the morning of January 11th, 2002: the little girl woke up on her sixth birthday and immediately rushed to the front window, pressing her face to the glass in excitement. She was greeted with the sight of a beautiful blanket of snow, just like she knew there would be, and her mother was barely able to get her to throw on mittens and a jacket before she was racing out the door and into a brilliant white wonderland.

This miracle that happened was one that the little girl forgot as she grew older, as her faith was lost and found, stretched and tarnished and forged anew. But her mother didn’t forget it, and over twenty years later, she was able to share the story with one of her patients who was struggling with their own faith. The miracle belonged to the mother just as much as it did to the little girl.

Sometimes, I think that we get stuck in thinking of miracles as singular events that happen to people for a moment, and then they’re over. But miracles are just as alive as we are – what happened to a six-year-old over twenty years ago had grown and was able to be used in a new, miraculous way with a complete stranger. 

The biggest miracle of all – the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ – is just as alive and miraculous as it was two thousand years ago. I’d argue that it’s even more alive today, that the miracle only grows with each and every person who learns about and decides to dedicate their lives to Jesus.

In life, we’re all going to be the little girl, the mother, and the stranger of this story. Miracles are going to happen to us, to the people we know, and to people we will eventually meet somewhere along the line. The important thing is that we keep talking about them – not letting them fade with memory – and we keep talking about Jesus and what he’s done for us.

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere – in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” – Acts 1:8 (NLT)