All the people saw him walking and praising God, and they recognized that he was the one who used to sit and beg at the Beautiful Gate of the temple. So they were filled with awe and astonishment at what had happened to him. (Acts 3:9-10)
We’re all looking for a miracle. We want God to make our lives better. More comfortable and pleasurable. We want him to make our lives more exciting. We want to be shocked and awed.
And God does that sometimes, as he did here in Acts 3. But his main goal isn’t to impress us. Think about it. Why didn’t Jesus ever do magic tricks? Why didn’t God make anyone in the Bible fly like Superman? If he wanted to shock and awe people with his power, that would have been pretty effective.
It never happened, because God’s motive for performing miracles goes a lot deeper. He wants to give us a picture of the gospel! Like the man in this story who walked for the first time in his life, we are broken, diseased, helpless people from birth. We need our lives to be turned upside down by God’s power and grace. So Jesus comes and gives us what only he can: miraculous healing. And his goal is to get us to respond just like this man did: with awe, astonishment, and praise.