Dear Conrad - Last night I was watching the Atlantis documentary on history channel. They were talking about this one volcano that effected a city called Thebe and that the results from it caused the earth to act screwy. They said that some believe that this caused the plagues as accounted in exodus. While I am skeptical on this instance...it made me start to think whether when God does something miraculous is it just “POOF” there it is or does he put effect the earth in a scientific way to make something happen. Example. When Jesus told Peter to cast his nets in a different place was it just “POOF” - fish, or did he a school of fish (perhaps migrating to warmer waters or whatever) come by when Peter casted his nets? So my question basically is does God do miracles within the realms of the scientific laws or does he momentarily break them? I know this is probably one of those questions we wont ever know...and realize to some might be pointless...but I was just wondering and wanted to get some other insight into it...I am open to any view on this. – DavyD

Dear DavyD,

God does both. A miracle is a wondrous work of God that is above and beyond what we would expect. Just taking the plagues for example. The water into blood thing is God just going “POOF” – blood. Also, Christ did something similar with water into wine. That goes against physical laws as we know it. But the locust plague can be easily explained with natural phenomena. God can use both. He is the author of physical and scientific realms and can use them however he sees fit.

What some TV shows, like the one you watched, do is they try to explain miracles away - as if God didn’t do them – that they just happened by chance. But just because God used something we can explain, doesn’t mean he didn’t cause it to happen.