We’ll be having a “special report” soon on miracles, but before that, it’s interesting to note some of the subtler ways in which the supernatural intervenes.

One manner: having you and those around you at the right place at the right time.

How many times has help or comfort come to you in that fashion? How many times have you been nudged from danger (without knowing it at the moment)?

Call it the “subtly miraculous.”

The glory of God is there. It is right in front of us. What we need to do is see and reach for it, ask for it, receive it.

God nudges and assists in ways seen, unseen, or barely noticed. He is rutilant in the near-distance.

Actually, closer than your shadow.

A five-year-old kid falls into a creek, unable to swim, but fishermen happen to have just thrown in lines across the way and were able to pinpoint where the boy sank in impossibly murky water. That allows a car with passerbys who just happened to know the kid to jump in and find him while a woman likewise happening by at the same time also happened to know CPR. The boy, though found unconscious, is saved.

This was an actual case in Decatur, Illinois.

Or, the nefarious is exposed, in surprising fashion, before it can harm.

Case in point: in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a woman named Colleen Jacobsen, who was a roving bank teller, filling in at branches where she was needed. She had just found a permanent position and was going to start soon.

It was March 30, 2000. A woman came into the last branch, asking her to cash a check.

When Colleen glanced at it, she noticed that it had the same design as her own personal checks.

A split second later, Colleen saw that her name and that of her husband were on it.

The stranger was trying to cash one of their checks!

A roving bank teller who just happens to be substituting in at a branch where the second or third customer of the day (the line was long) turns out to be a thief who had robbed her!

Come to learn, the Jacobsens’ mailman had not been able to fit a box of new checks in the slot of their front door and had left them at the stoop, with the thief happening by and spotting it.

“I was somewhat flustered,” recounted Colleen, who was trying to buy time–to stall–so she could summon help. She told the woman there was “a little trouble with the computer” and meanwhile summoned security.

The woman left, suspecting something was up, and the guard ran after her.

The thief (after a struggle) was arrested. Justice served. Checks returned.

Odds?

Pretty hard to calculate.

Jimmy the Greek would have loved it.

From what we can tell, there are at least 53 branches in Lancaster and 18 different banks. Let us know your miracles. It’s that time of year!

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