{"id":15741,"date":"2026-03-10T12:06:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T12:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/the-miracle-collector\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:00:08","slug":"the-miracle-collector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/angels-and-miracles\/miracles\/gods-grace\/the-miracle-collector\/","title":{"rendered":"The Miracle Collector"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn Science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself.\u201d So wrote C. S. Lewis in his 1947 book Miracles, <\/em>which influenced generations of Christian writers. One of them is Eric Metaxas, who is best known for his biographies of the English abolitionist William Wilberforce and the anti-Nazi martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His newest book\u2014also titled Miracles<\/em>\u2014follows in Lewis\u2019s footsteps.<\/p>\n

Why did you write this book? <\/strong>
\nI\u2019m somebody who has experienced miracles. I told an editor about one. He pursued me to write a book about them. I could see two ways the subject could be handled badly. One was to make it too religious. Is there something beyond this world? This is a question everyone has. And then I thought, there are books like The Secret, <\/em>where there is sloppiness theologically. That does a disservice to the subject of miracles as well.<\/p>\n

What were your own experiences with the miraculous? <\/strong>
\nI grew up more as a Greek than Greek Orthodox. You eat the foods, perform the rituals and go to church. But it was not something that I took particularly seriously. In college at Yale, I bought into secular thinking. Afterward, I was confused in life. I took a job proofreading chemical manuals at Union Carbide. It was there that I met a guy who was serious about his faith. He discussed God with me in a very sensitive way. I still wasn\u2019t buying it, but it began a dialogue.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: 5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MIRACLES<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Then my uncle died, around my twenty-fifth birthday. I had this dream. I was ice fishing on Candlewood Lake, where I\u2019d spent a lot of time growing up. A golden fish poked through the ice. Not a goldfish, a fish made of gold. I held him up and felt this overwhelming peace. I recognized the fish as a symbol of Christ. Never in my life had I had a dream like that. In it, Jesus basically revealed himself to me. The only other time I had a dream like that was 20 years later.<\/p>\n

Before you wrote <\/strong>Bonhoeffer<\/em><\/strong>\u2026 <\/strong>
\nI was in my forties. I had a very specific dream of my extended family gathering for a photo in the German village where my mother grew up. I saw myself at five years old, desperately wanting to get in the picture, even though I knew that in real life, I hadn\u2019t been to my mother\u2019s village at that age. Then I woke up. It was strange. I almost never thought about my German roots.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t reach my mother, so I called my aunt. She told me that the night before, some relatives had e-mailed her a photo. She sent it to me. Everyone looked exactly as they had in my dream. Did I know the meaning of it? No! Later I came to the conclusion that God really wanted me to write about Germany. That led me to Bonhoeffer.<\/p>\n

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