Medical miracles abound in historical records and today's news. Most doctors testify to inexplicable healing. Many people have experienced this themselves or know someone who has. Prayer, which ask God to intervene in a situation, is now an accepted part of treatment in many practices and hospitals. You'll even see prayer advertised on television as part of the protocol at treatment centers.

A miracle is something that cannot be explained by the laws of nature. Modern technology has made it easier to document events of this nature; tumors that are found by CAT scans and then vanish, for example, are matters of record. However, many a miracle doesn't need an X-ray to validate it. If a blind man sees and a paralyzed man gets up and walks, no one doubts that something awesome has happened.

Religious history is filled with the miraculous, usually in a religious context. The Christian heritage is filled with them. The best known include the Lazarus coming out of the tomb, the feeding of the five thousand, and the ten lepers. Christians still hope for and even expect miraculous events, which are a feature of many healing ministries.

Christianity and Islam believe that the power to supernaturally intervene in world affairs is in God's hands. Buddhism and many New Age belief systems think that man is himself able to do the supernatural through meditation or other means of communication with universal power. Christians and Muslims fast and pray, Buddhists meditate. Others try to find the power that they are sure dwells within themselves to influence or surmount natural laws.

Medical miracles are often disputed by those who do not believe. They cite the error potential of technology or say that misdiagnoses are common. However, both doctors and nurses often avow that things happen for which they have no other explanation than miraculous improvement. They believe in diagnostic machines enough to proceed with surgery and treatment, and are not prone to blame mechanical failure for the cases where disease disappears in a moment.

The news media love to bring incredible stories to us. A man survives a knife through his heart, another falls more than forty stories and recovers, a young child is under water for forty minutes but is revived with faculties intact, another is buried in sand for even longer but is OK despite being struck in the head by the backhoe digging for his body. Who can explain such things as rational, business as usual, or simple luck?

It could be that any recovery from illness is a miracle. The ability of the human body to heal itself, even when drugs or surgery help things along, is mind boggling. The fact that people display superhuman strength or endurance in times of great stress or danger is well-known. Lifting cars, swimming for more than thirty hours in frigid seas, surviving in sub-zero cold, or coming back from more than half an hour under water with mind and body intact surely come under the category of the miraculous.

It's nice to have medical miracles happening all over the world. No one wants to feel alone in the face of life-threatening illness. Knowing that there is the possibility of supernatural intervention can bring hope and comfort.