Petra Anderson.  Did you hear about her story?  She was one of the people shot in the Aurora theater shooting.  She took several bullets, one going through her nose and into her brain, stopping at the back of her skull.

But it wasn’t Petra’s time yet…

“The doctor explains that Petra’s brain has had from birth a small “defect” in it. It is a tiny channel of fluid running through her skull…Only a CAT scan would catch it, and Petra would have never noticed it.

But in Petra’s case, the shotgun buck shot…enters her brain from the exact point of this defect. Like a marble through a small tube, the defect channels the bullet from Petra’s nose through her brain. It turns slightly several times, and comes to rest at the rear of her brain. And in the process, the bullet misses all the vital areas of the brain.” (Petra’s pastor, Brad Strait)

Twenty three years ago, at Petra’s conception, God was very much involved in the design of her brain.  He knew when he created and formed her  that this past Friday morning at 12:30 a.m. a bullet would come at her face and threaten to destroy her brain.  And so He made a distinct tunnel from her nose to her brain – the exact entry and route that the bullet would take so that there would be NO INJURY to the brain.  That, my friends, is a miracle of the most deliberate and specific proportions.

Psalm 139:13-16 never seemed more vibrant and alive –

13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

One more example of beauty and life in the middle of ugliness and death.  God is here.  He is aware.  And He is at work.

But what about those people who didn’t receive a miracle?  Why are the miracles only reserved for a few?  That hardly seems fair.

I am coming up on the anniversary of my youngest son Mitchell’s life and death.  Sixteen years ago I gave birth to what everyone thought was a perfectly healthy baby boy.  Fifteen days later in the Seattle Children’s PICU, Mitchell died.  Other children and babies survived and later thrived after being through what his little body had endured.  They were the “miracle” babies.  Why didn’t God work a miracle for me and my baby?

In the days, weeks, months and even years following Mitchell’s death, I realized that God HAD indeed been working miracles all along.  Though Mitchell’s life was taken, other people’s lives were changed as a result.  Faith was explored and deepened.  Relationships were bonded.  New insight, perspective and appreciation grew out of that horrid situation. A life was lost but so much of life was found in the process by so many. How can that be anything short of miraculous?

Knowing that all of our days are “ordained” or chosen specifically allows me to see the miracles in each day I’m given here on this earth.  I may not get to choose the miracles that I experience – that is up to the God I love who can see way beyond the boundaries of my own nearsighted vision.  But I CAN choose to open my eyes to the miracles that occur even in the most dire circumstances.

Petra’s miracle is obvious.  But for those who lost their lives, the miracles may be more “subtle” and come at random times in the lives of those they left behind.  God is no less at work on their stories than He is in Petra’s story. He’s just hand picking different kinds of miracles.

Open my eyes, Jesus, to the miracles You’re working on right now.  I don’t want to miss a thing…