The preacher at the memorial service no doubt thought he was giving a message of comfort to those who had lost a loved one. The central thrust of his message was that it was Jim’s time to go. It was apparently the kind of message he had repeated many times before. Jim was my wife’s younger brother, and the memorial service had been delayed a year because of Covid.

I think that there are enough credible stories to lead an open-minded person who is not wedded to a materialistic worldview to think that in our times (not just in biblical times) there are events that can be called miraculous by my definition of the term (an event that goes against what we would expect to happen apart from the operation of some extraordinary power). Some events strongly suggest the operation of powers other than those recognized by contemporary scientific accounts.