Paul: sweat-rags and miracles

God did extraordinary miracles through Paul. Handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them. Acts 19:11-12

What are we to make of these verses? Are they true? Or is Luke describing the superstitions of a gullible people? And don't we immediately catch a whiff of the medieval faith in the relics of the martyrs?

This, Luke tells us, happened during the period when Paul was teaching daily for two years in Ephesus. Clearly the Holy Spirit was at work, drawing people from near and far to hear the word of the Lord, and imbuing that word with power.

And thus, it appears, the Spirit's power overflowed in extraordinary ways. The Spirit, we know, 'blows wherever he wills'. And at certain times, in Scripture (as in Luke 5:17) and history, he breaks out in remarkable ways.

Although the apostles didn't write much about it, it seems that manifestations of the Spirit in works of power were taken for granted in the early church. Indeed Luke's very use of the word 'extraordinary' implies that the church was familiar with 'ordinary' miracles.

I once heard a challenging sermon series entitled 'the naturally supernatural life': I prefer the phrase 'the supernaturally natural life'. The natural life - the life that we live here, on this earth, day by day, in our human relationships and duties. But supernatural in the sense that beyond the everyday - the world of politics, of commuting, of conceiving babies, of climbing mountains, of hiring and firing staff - is the power of a Holy Spirit whom we cannot predict or control. People are healed, people are set free and the good news is preached to the poor.

We mustn't allow our rationality to submerge our expectancy. In the US best-seller The Shack, the protagonist, Mack, reflects on his seminary education: 'It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and the uncivilized, while educated Westerners' access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia'. The more we expect, hope for and pray for, the more we are, in a sense, giving the Lord permission to work in the everyday in ways that we cannot understand.

To our faith and hope let us add expectancy, and ask the Lord to surprise us in 2009.

Helen Parry (LICC)