What Is a Miracle?

This morning, while reading “What Is a Miracle?” (What Is…” section 13 in the Workbook), I had a striking insight. The section focuses on perception:

A miracle is a correction…. It merely looks on devastation and reminds the mind that what is sees is false. It undoes error…. (1:1,2-3)

A miracle inverts perception, which was upside down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest. Now is perception open to the truth. Now is forgiveness justified. (2:3-4)

Forgiveness is the home of miracles. The eyes of Christ deliver them to all they look upon in mercy and in love. Perception stands corrected in His sight, and what was meant to curse has come to bless. Each lily of forgiveness offers all the world the silent miracle of love. (3:1-4)

My mind works by making connections, and so I started thinking about the the connections among perception, forgiveness, miracles, and love, and that’s when I had the insight:

If my perception is unloving; that is, if I look on anyone with anything but love, my perception is wrong, upside down, and it needs correction. It needs to be put right side up. It needs to be returned to love. That’s where the miracle comes in: It corrects my unloving perception, and that allows me to see the person differently, with the eyes of Christ. That, in turn, allows me––makes me want to––forgive the person and offer him or her “the silent miracle of love,” a miracle being an expression of love!

This couldn’t have come at a better time, because I was caught up in a grievance that I was holding against someone, and I felt no love at all for the person and no desire to forgive him––even though I knew that I had to if I wanted to regain the peace that I had lost over this. According to my insight, if I felt no love for him, my perception was wrong and needed correction. If I saw him with anything but the eyes of Christ, I was seeing him wrongly. So, as I wrote in my journal:

• I need a miracle to correct my unloving thoughts and thus my wrong perception of him.
• This will allow me to see him in the light of the truth about him; see him with the eyes of Christ.
• This will make me want to forgive him.
• This will prompt me to offer him “a silent miracle of love”; and…
• This will bring me peace.
• Thus, the miracle I gave will be returned to me!

In my “Walking the Path” gatherings, I’m doing an Advent series leading up to a Course-based Christmas, and here was the whole Advent week of peace story, which was to be followed next by the week of love!

I should also mention that today’s lesson was 345, “I offer only miracles today, for I would have them be returned to me.” I’m sure that it contributed to the insight I had.

Then let me give this gift alone today [“a silent miracle of love”]
which, born of true forgiveness, lights the way
that I must travel to remember You. (1:7)

This connected me with, “The way to God is through forgiveness here. There is no other way” (Lesson 256.2:1-2). So, this is what walking the path means: Jesus is teaching us to forgive and offer miracles and thus walk the “path of light” (Review 5.5:4) back home to God and to our true Self. This is the only way to walk the path, step by step in love and forgiveness, offering miracles––expressions of love––and receiving them in return. Receiving first the miracle to correct our perception, then offering it, then having it return “in just the form I need to help me with the problems I perceive” (Lesson 345.1:4).

I went into the rest of my day with joy and a light heart, already feeling that my perception had been corrected––that I had been freed. Then, in a totally unscheduled way, I ended up talking with the person against whom I had the grievance and whom I had seen as the cause of my problems. Fresh from my insight, I talked with him, feeling love for him and peace within myself, and all was resolved. I knew that this was the Holy Spirit who had informed my mind and brought me that huge insight that changed everything for me. My thoughts and perceptions had been corrected, “laundered” clean, and I had been returned to right-mindedness. He gave me the miracle that corrected my perception, and that allowed me to forgive my brother and offer him a miracle, and that brought me a miracle of love and returned me to peace.

The commentary for Lesson 345 started out with, “Peace to all seeking hearts today” (2:1), and I felt that peace definitely had returned to my seeking heart!