Meaning of Miracles

     It is interesting to reflect on what kinds of impacts people can have on others. Watching the movie "Miracles from Heaven" made me realize that people's impact is not just felt immediately but has big repercussions from others. Even though this movie is directed and presented from a Christian perspective, I couldn't help but think about how it could have been looked at from the perspective of cause and conditions.
    The movie is based on a true story about a girl who inexplicably develops an illness where part of her intestine cannot digest food properly. The movie shows the pain she has to endure as a result, including having to be tube-fed and suffering severe abdominal pain. None of the doctors can cure this girl, but there comes a point where she is climbing a tree and falls by accident down a trunk, suffering a severe concussion in the process. All the family members decide to pray for her after several fruitless hours of trying to lift her out of the tree. She later recovers--and, as it turns out, her illness is miraculously cured as well. The girl explains to her parents that she had experienced an out-of-body experience at the time of her death, whereupon she had entered a heavenly realm and God had told her that she was not ready to die yet. The mother, who has been a guiding force throughout the movie in caring for her daughter, explains at the end of the movie: it was a miracle from God that allowed the child to live without illness, as there could have been no other explanation for how all her body was recalibrated after falling from the tree. After all, the chances of recovering after such an illness are almost infinitesimally small. Could only a miracle have explained it? The mother goes on to explain that there were other miracles that often go unrecognized, including all the efforts that people had made out of compassion to ensure that the family could help their daughter as much as possible.
      As I was watching this movie, the thought occurred to me: I don't know what the miracle is exactly, but I echo the idea that the different people's intentions are perhaps highly significant miracles. When people intend for good things to happen, they happen, and it seems there is a power in simply loving and caring. I don't know where love and care comes from, but it certainly doesn't seem to arise from reasoning or logic alone. According to the rules of 'logic' or scientific laws, the girl would have likely passed away in a short time. I believe what the movie tries to show is: we should not bind ourselves with what seems inevitable, since that 'inevitable' is only an attachment to a specific view about life. It's kind of like attachment to a purely physical universe, where wishing or intending with sincerity make no difference. But on the contrary, it seems that intention makes all the difference. For example, if people had never intended to protect their descendants, would any civilization have advanced or developed in the first place? Without a basic urge to protect or care for others, it might not have happened in this way. But where does that compassion come from? Again, it's a mystery that goes into how we are interconnected.