Miracles

My feeling about miracles has always been that they're not about some seemingly impossible thing happening, they're about the right thing happening at the right time. In the story above, the "miracle" is not that David was able to kill Goliath (to paraphrase Salvatore, a rock through the head ends life quite naturally), but that when someone was needed to defeat Goliath, David was there.

Similarly, I've never had a problem with the attempts to scientifically re-explain the Exodus; if anything, I think they make the story cooler. A God that can reach down and smite pharaoh or part the seas? Interesting. But one that causes volcanic eruptions on the other side of the ocean in order to set off some Goldberg-esque series of events that would lead to our freedom? Neat! Besides, I think all evidence supports the idea that God would never take the simple and direct route when some unnecessarily difficult method was available.

The miracle was not that it happened, but that it happened at the right time, when we needed it.

Of course, this raises the question: on all those other occasions when we needed a miracle and nothing happened, where was God?