By Sarah Knight
I really enjoyed the Circle of Atonement class on the different aspects of miracles in ACIM. While the content wasn’t new to me, I appreciated the chance to reflect on the nature of miracles and to revisit the nuances they involve.
During the session, something came to mind as ‘miraculous’, although I hadn’t seen it that way at the time. Looking back, I can see:
– A gift from me to someone else
– Which helped the recipient
– Which came from Holy Spirit guidance
– The blessing returned to me, meeting a (totally unrelated) need I had
– It also corrected attack thoughts/erroneous perception
Here’s what happened:
Last summer, over a number of weeks, my husband kept ordering the wrong “milk” in our grocery deliveries. I don’t drink dairy, and these alternatives are expensive. After a while, I realized he’d “wasted” quite a bit of money, and I’d run out of the milk I actually like in my tea.
He was pretty flippant about it, telling me to just throw the cartons away. I felt increasingly irritated, and in a moment of frustration, I asked for guidance – not on what to do with the milk, but how to deal with my annoyance/attack thoughts. The answer I got surprised me: Put a post on the local Facebook group and give it away.
Within minutes of posting, a woman responded. Her granddaughter had just been diagnosed with a dairy intolerance, and her daughter–on a low income–was struggling to afford the alternatives. I was so happy to be able to give her all the cartons I had. She picked them up, thanked me, and that was that.
A few weeks later, the same thing happened with our order, but I wasn’t bothered about it this time. Instead of being frustrated about my husband’s mistake, I saw it as an opportunity to help and messaged her directly to offer the cartons.
A few weeks after that, she knocked on my door. In her hands were two plants. On her previous visit, she’d noticed a big gap in my front garden (where a tree had died and been removed) and had taken cuttings from her own garden to grow something for me.
This summer, those plants have flourished. They’re full of flowers, buzzing with bees, and bring me joy every time I see them.
I was genuinely touched by her kindness, but hadn’t thought of the ‘miraculous’ nature of this exchange until the class.
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The miracle behind this grievance will resolve it for me. The answer to this problem is the miracle which it conceals. [CE W-90.2:3-4]
The holy light you saw outside yourself, in every miracle you offered to your brothers, will be returned to you. [CE T-13.IX.8:3]
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