The outpouring of prayers for Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, following his frightening cardiac episode during Monday Night Football, was nothing short of inspiring. I wrote last week about how the entire episode revealed an obvious and intrinsic impulse in humanity to cry out to his Creator – even those who try desperately to repress that inclination and pretend that we are captains of our own destinies.
What's been encouraging is to see that the initial spate of heartfelt prayers have continued throughout this last weekend, and the league that famously stoked division by taking a knee just a few years ago is using it to bring people together.
Conservative author Megan Basham summed it up well:
But there's an important aspect to prayers for those who are serious about their power and significance, and that is the conscious recognition that they are being offered up to a God that is anything but absent and indifferent. He hears, He cares, He reacts.
Which means that as Damar Hamlin has made incredible progress and is on the road to recovery, it is every bit as appropriate to offer praise to the God who is there and who is not silent for His hearing and healing. Hamlin's own coach, Sean McDermott, recognized as much:
Former Super Bowl winning head coach, Hall of Famer Tony Dungy, also offered gratitude to God for having "watched over" Hamlin:
But not everyone saw Hamlin's recovery as a "miracle" worth praising God for accomplishing:
I want to be as generous to Dr. Hasson as possible. I don't get the impression she is so much angry that God is getting the credit for doing what highly trained medical professionals actually did. I think she's doing two things:
- She's offering appreciation and respect to the medical professionals who were trained and prepared to care for Hamlin's emergency.
- She's expressing concern that others who have serious medical conditions – even the same kind Hamlin encountered – who don't experience the same kind of recovery will feel that God has, for some reason, abandoned them when He didn't Damar.
I think both of those reactions are admirable, even if misguided. I don't think we need to get into a philosophical debate over what constitutes a divine miracle in order to address this issue. After all, I'd contend that every breath a human being takes is the result of supernatural intervention. The functioning of our bodies themselves is miraculous and is testimony of the handiwork of a God without whose genius we could do, and would be, literally nothing.
While the point "if everything is a miracle, nothing is a miracle" is taken, I'd counterpoint that we are far too stingy in ascribing to God the glory that is due Him. Reserving heavenly praise only for those rare instances where a "logical," "scientific" explanation cannot be found ignores the reality that logic, science, and our ability to understand either is itself miraculous.
To the argument that we should only praise God sparingly, I respectfully dissent.
I think the timing of Hamlin's incident was providential.
I think the physics of the hit were providential.
I think the location of the violent collision was providential.
I think the proximity of highly trained medical experts to the scene was providential.
I think access to life-saving AED and ambulance care was providential.
So of course, I think the expert medical care he has received is providential as well. It takes nothing away from the study or work of Dr. Hasson's colleagues to say that the Almighty used them to save a life in the most public way possible – and in so doing, brought an element of attention and glory to Himself that otherwise wouldn't have happened.
Call me crazy, but I think the lesson from the Damar Hamlin story isn't that we give God too much credit for the daily miracle of our lives, but that we so arrogantly and frequently forget to.
