If We Call Anything a Miracle

A seed falls to the ground.  Usually it stays there for a time, and then perhaps it "starts" to "grow."  Of course, it might have been growing since its fertilization, and there might not be, chemically speaking, any specific time at which it "starts" to "grow."  Then again, it might just lie there in the ground until it rots.  Or it could start to rot, and then--out of seeming stubbornness, proceed to grow.

Or we could say, as Jesus did, that the seed falls to the ground and dies, and out of the dead seed grows the plant.  Jesus' take on the matter would seem to be biologically inaccurate--although his biologic inaccuracy would differ from the inaccuracy of the colloquial "starts to grow" version only in terms of degree.

We think of seeds and plants and virtually all other things as though we understood them, but our "understanding" is invariably a function of our manner of interaction with them.  We interact with seeds as seeds and plants as plants, and so to us such things exist in themselves.  We might be made to look silly in that we hold to concepts such as seeds "dying" into life (to say nothing of any ideas we might have of a "miracle" of the plant being born), but ultimately seeds and plants and all that comprise them consist of the existing universe, which--to us--has no reason to exist.

No explanation--not a self-existent singularity, nor a pulsing, always-existing universe, nor the sovereign will of God--can supply the immediate reason why existence exists.  We can call it a miracle, and we can call any of its manifestations miracles, and the best we can hope for is internal coherence in our take on the existence in which we are trapped.

If we call anything a miracle, then we must call everything a miracle.