Miraculous Universe

Sunday, April 12, 2026

Scriptures: Genesis 1:1-3, Colossians 1:17-17

• Sermon Summary

  Jeremy kicked off our new series, The Miraculous, by reframing our category of a miracle. He argued that a miracle is not a suspension of natural laws, but the fact that laws, or anything at all exists and works at all. He explored the Genesis creation story as a critique of ancient myths. The he connected it to modern cosmology and the Big Bang to theology. His main argument was that God is the "ground of being" and the relationship that sustains every atom and everything we know and experience as life. His invitation to us was  to see things we would call mundane as part of a vast, miraculous reality sustained by divine love.

• Discussion Guide

  Community is shaped by the conversations we share. These questions and reflections are a tool to help you meaningfully engage with the themes of this week's teaching.

  Connect:  In this series, we’re talking about the miraculous. Without diving too deep yet, what comes to mind when you hear the word “miracle”—and why?

  Share: Share your reaction to this quote from Jeremy’s message:
  
  “Often our imagination of miracles begins and ends with the idea that a miracle is when God supernaturally suspends the rules of the universe around us. Or when God interferes with reality in a way that doesn’t make sense to us. Maybe God sticks a finger into the sand a draws a line that wasn’t there before. And… maybe that happens.

  But I would suggest: the moments that actually alter the trajectory of our lives, the encounters that change how we think about ourselves and what’s possible for us—those are more often born of moments we might call mundane.

  What I am saying is that there are all kinds of moments in my life that have felt miraculous to me, only in looking back. Because I realized they made me see my world in fundamentally new ways. They opened up my perspective, or they brought me into some new experience. I mean, what is the point of a miracle if not to shift the window of possibility in your life.

  And yet—by any stretch of any external evaluation—none of those moments could ever be declared decidedly special at all, certainly nothing miraculous.

  I want to suggest that’s a category error.

  You see, we tend to think of the miraculous when something goes off script, but part of what I want to argue today is that I think it’s a miracle the script even holds together at all.”

  • Could you share a moment in your life that made you see your world in fundamentally different ways, would you call that moment miraculous?

  Reflect: Reflect on some of the links in the chain of argument that Jermey was building in the sermon. Which one connected with your the most and why?

  First, Genesis doesn’t imagine a time before creation.  It talks about time when God began creating, offering a big critique on the predominant religious paradigms of it’s day, and functioning as an alternative imagination of the world.

  Second, with all its incredible achievements, modern science can talk about the time when the universe began, but there’s no way to know or describe anything that was before that beginning, all our theories about anything existing before that beginning point stop working.

  Third, based on our impossibility to access and know what was there before creation, Jeremy argues that our imaginary “familiarity with God” (to quote a priest who first thought about the bing bang theory) is what gets in the way. We are like characters in the story trying to understand the author while being in the story. We can discern a lot of things about God, thanks to diving self-disclosure in Jesus, and we can know God’s love and follow in the way of Jesus, but we can never peer outside our “written” universe to comprehend God as God. There’s a fundamental category difference between us and the divine.

  ——

  How does this quote below resonate with you theologically and personally?
  
  "God doesn't exist... at least not the way you and I do in the universe.
  God is the space between that allows a universe to exist at all.
  God is the name we give to that which holds all of it together.
  And faith then is trusting that it is that same divine relationship that makes existence possible, it is that relationship that forms and shapes and guides and holds all things together in love…”

  Engage: Jeremy argued that everything that exists, big and small, galaxies and quarks, everything is interconnected and interdependent. “Everything is just a continuous line of relationships— all the way down— until all that’s left is nothing but relationships… There is absolutely no point in the universe — no matter how big or small you want to get — where anything that exists exists on it’s own.”

  Engage with the idea that “relationship” is the fundamental building block of everything that we know and that God is the "relationship" that holds atoms, galaxies, and even our own minds together.

  • How does that influence the way you see relationships in your own life?

  • And how does that reframe your understanding of what is miraculous?

  Take away: This is your take away reflection question with which Jeremy wrapped up his sermon. Reflect on it thought the week if you’d like, take notes, journal, pray.

  “If everything in the universe really is held together by relationship.
  And if God is the name we give to the love that sustains it all.

  Then where, in your life right now, Is an ordinary relationship or a simple observation, or an overlooked memory, really anything sacred you’ve stopped noticing for how incredible it truly is?

  And what might change if you treated that like the miracle it is all over again?”

  Prayer from the sermon:

  God of all that is,
  Source and sustainer of every breath,
  every atom, every unseen connection,
  We pause now, not to escape the world, but to notice it…

  To notice that we are here —
  held together in ways we barely understand,
  loved in ways we often overlook.

  In this season of resurrection,
  wake us up again
  not just to the idea of new life,
  but to the miracle of life already unfolding around us.

  Where we have become numb,
  make us curious.
  Where we have become cynical,
  make us attentive.
  Where we have assumed the ordinary, teach us to see the sacred.

  Remind us that nothing is random,
  and nothing is wasted,
  and no moment is outside your grace.

  So stretch our imagination,
  and open us to the wonder that we are part of something vast and beautiful and still being made new.

  In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray,
  Amen.

• Service Songs & Prayers

  CALL TO WORSHIP Psalm 116

  MUSIC Curated by Kevin Borst
  Mission House - Good God
  Mission House - Psalm 116
  Commons Worship - Restore My Soul
  Brooke Ligertwood - A Thousand Hallelujahs
  
  EASTERTIDE PRAYER FOR NEW BEGINNINGS
  By Yelena Pakhomova

  Every year the church sets aside fifty days to celebrate the resurrection.

  Fifty days to allow hope and joy to sink in.

  Fifty days to reframe the way we see the world and learn to live out of that new perspective.

  The Easter season tells us: it's good to linger here, to take this time to stretch our imagination, expand our heart, and grow our capacity for all the ways new life can take hold of us.

  Would you join me now in a springtime prayer for new beginnings.

  Creator God,
  As the earth awakes from winter slumber into a new cycle of life,
  We also wake to the dreams within us.
  Help us to listen to our desires and not dismiss them too quickly,
  to honour our ideas however wild,
  and be present to the quiet stirrings of what is possible.
  May we take our longing for a fresh start as an invitation to become fully alive in you.

  Risen Christ,
  Every Easter, we celebrate
  that love is stronger than all the forces of death,
  and brokenness doesn't have the last word.
  Remind those of us today who struggle to hold on to hope
  that new beginnings don't have to be grand,
  that even small steps toward healing will eventually bring us there,
  and that you are with us every step of the way.

  Spirit who breathes new life in us even now,
  As we think about where we need a fresh start:
  Give us courage to get out of our own way,
  Give us friends and mentors to stand in our corner,
  And give us patience not to give up too quickly.
  Bless us as we grow and change in this paradox of a world
  where there's still too much to fix,
  Yet where, with Christ, a new beginning is always possible.

  Amen.
  
  SERIES BUMPER
  The Miraculous