One wintry day last fall I was going through my Facebook News Feed and came across story after story of God’s miraculous work: God rescued, God provided, God saved, all in seemingly supernatural ways. We’ve all heard those stories of how a cheque comes in the mail for the precise amount of an impending bill that wouldn’t have been paid, or how an unintended schedule change saves a life. I have a few of them myself, stories that talk about God’s power and love revealed in apparently undeniable ways.

I actually like those stories, although more often than not I feel like I’m walking a knife’s edge when I hear them (or even when I tell them), the suspense lying in whether I would let myself believe that God had much to do at all with the ‘miracle.’ People tell these stories in order to affirm or encourage faith, but…