Normal vs. Paranormal? Natural vs. Miraculous?

I was reading today a quote that said there is nothing paranormal except our limited knowledge of nature. That’s what the quote said..

I can relate to that statement because of an experience I had a few years ago.

You may remember an asteroid belt that ended up flying through our atmosphere a few years back. Many got up and laid outside in the early morning to watch it go through the atmosphere.

I was driving about 5 miles south of my house, in broad daylight, when something caught my eye to the left. I turned my head in time to see a fireball in the sky. Thing is, it appeared to be the size of the Sun (my perspective).

But this was not normal.. it was paranormal. Here’s why. It was high in the atmosphere, so it was quite large, but it was moving across the sky as if it were a jet 200 feet above the ground.

It lasted 2 seconds at most.. took 2 seconds to fly from the horizon on my left to the horizon on my right. So fast, in fact, that by the time everyone in the car looked it was gone.

My idea of normal was shattered. It laid in pieces on the floor of that minivan.

Seriously, Up to this time, the nearest I’d come to Paranormal was Teflon®. (I mean, how is that surface dry yet feel wet? It has to dry out eventually, right? Just sayin’...)

As a Christian I’ve heard (and talked) about miraculous things all my life. Friends who are healed from a non-operable cancer. People who testify of an Angel’s presence who led them through a mind-field. Miraculous circumstances that freed people from prison.

All those things. You know, when we feel God’s presence. We ‘see’ Him working in people’s lives.

But Paranormal? Physical aberrations that seem impossible? Something you can touch? Aren’t these things paranormal? Why don’t these miraculous things of the faith amaze me.. humble me.. bring me to my knees?

Have I become numb to the supernatural, because its not paranormal? I’ve realized that I’m pretty much still a skeptic to these things. I’m a Thomas. A doubter. Do people really see these things? Are they using them as a way to make their story more significant or impacting? Were those people really healed or just misdiagnosed to begin with.

Even as I write this I have a fear coursing through my arm that people are going to be disappointed in me for expressing these feelings... that I’m somehow not holding up my end of the story. I’m not trusting in what people tell me, or that I’m denying the working, maybe even the existence of God.

I don’t. I know what I know. I feel what I feel. I’m a witness to his miraculous hand in my life and others... but unless I remind myself that those things I know, feel, and witness are not natural, ordinary things, I begin to classify them as normal, and they become something I take for granted, or worse something I don’t even recognize as the hand of God working in my life and the life of others.

Then I see a fireball the size of a football field rocket 1,000 miles in 2 seconds and realize how small I am in this unbelievable, ordered creation and I realize that there is nothing miraculous except my limited knowledge of God’s omnipotent hand at the wheel of His creation. My limited recognition of His incomprehensible love for us and His desire to have us be an integral part of its fruition.