13. What Is a Miracle?
W-pII.13.1. A miracle is a correction. 2 It does not create, nor really change at all. 3 It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. 4 It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. 5 Thus it stays within time's limits. 6 Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love's awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it brings.
W-pII.13.2. A miracle contains the gift of grace, for it is given and received as one. 2 And thus it illustrates the law of truth the world does not obey, because it fails entirely to understand its ways. 3 A miracle inverts perception which was upside down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest. 4 Now is perception open to the truth. 5 Now is forgiveness seen as justified.
W-pII.13.3. Forgiveness is the home of miracles. 2 The eyes of Christ deliver them to all they look upon in mercy and in love. 3 Perception stands corrected in His sight, and what was meant to curse has come to bless. 4 Each lily of forgiveness offers all the world the silent miracle of love. 5 And each is laid before the Word of God, upon the universal altar to Creator and creation in the light of perfect purity and endless joy.
W-pII.13.4. The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. 2 Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. 3 And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there.
W-pII.13.5. Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die. 2 Now they have water. 3 Now the world is green. 4 And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality.
