Perhaps it’s my inner 12-year-old, but one of my all-time favorite movies is The Princess Bride. (Or perhaps I just haven’t seen that many movies.)
One of my favorite scenes in the movie comes when a ragtag band trying to thwart the evil Prince Humperdinck visits the village miracle man, Miracle Max, to bring their leader back to life. Max (played by a young-ish Billy Crystal) coats a magic pill with chocolate, gives it to the visitors, and sends them on their way. “Bye bye, kids!” he and his wife yell as they leave. “Do you think it’ll work?” she asks Max under her breath. “It’ll take a miracle,” says Miracle Max dryly, as they cheerfully wave and call, “Bye bye!”
“It’ll take a miracle.” As best I can define it, a miracle is a transformation that can only be explained by a supernatural act. We think of dramatic healings, resurrections, reversals of the inevitable, as miracles.
Yesterday at our staff meeting, we reflected on how important it is to remember that true transformation of lives – whether the urban kids we serve at SCYM or anyone in the human race, for that matter – happens the way Miracle Max said it: “It’ll take a miracle.”
It’s like the seed that the apostle Paul wrote about in I Corinthians 3:6-7 – “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.”
We work alongside kids – loving, encouraging, challenging, listening. We help make the conditions – the soil – conducive for growth and change. We faithfully wait, we water, we pray. But ultimately when life springs forth in a seed – something that is mysteriously dead but yet possesses the potential for life – well, it wasn’t us.
It’s a miracle.
The young man who has anger bottled up inside, but who is learning how to forgive and love others? Miracle.
The girl who didn’t care about her homework, her education, her future – or, frankly, herself – but who is beginning to care? Miracle.
The young men and women who have had lives full of conflict, violence, and fighting, but who make a choice to walk away from a fight for the sake of a future goal? Miracle.
As we work alongside young people who have faced many challenges in their lives – far more than most of us have had to face – we humbly recognize that any lasting change, any inner transformation, any community that begins to turn the tide of generational problems – does not come from us.
It’ll take a miracle. And we rejoice to know and serve the God who delights in miracles.
Faith Bosland
Executive Director