Why no Miracles?

A couple of years ago, I read a book written by an atheist.  In this book, he claimed that the one thing that would convince him that there is a God would be if he were to see a miracle.  That got me to thinking a bit about this whole miracle thing.  I've heard a few other people say things like how their faith would be strengthened if they were to see a miracle, or something along those lines.

It seems that many people take the lack of miracles as a sign of God's absence.  Why didn't God heal my mother?  Why did God allow that car accident?  Why doesn't God do something about abortion, or cancer, or a whole host of other bad things in life?  Now, while I won't pretend that there is an easy answer to these questions, the one thing I want to look at a bit is the seeming absence of God in all of this.

To guide our thinking, let me ask this: if miracles were commonplace, would they still be miracles?  Miracles are, by definition, something outside of the ordinary.  So if they became ordinary, they would no longer be miracles.  Sure, we might not be able to explain them, but there are quite a few things in life that we can't explain. 

When we look at the record of miracles in the Bible, it reminds us that miracles do not always lead to faith.  Let's take the Israelites when they were freed from Egypt.  God had brought them out with 10 plagues, guided them to the sea, where He parted the water so they passed through on dry ground, and then crushed the Egyptian army behind them.  These people saw a great miracle.  Just a few weeks later, we find them complaining that God led them out into the wilderness to starve.  Hadn't they just seen great miracles?  Did they not believe that God would provide for them?  And then, when Moses went up on the mountain, what was the first thing they did?  Build an idol of gold!  And then, when Moses sent 12 men to spy out the land that had been promised to Abraham, what was their report?  "The people are too big and strong and powerful for us!"  Hadn't they just seen God bring them out of Egypt, and they had done nothing to contribute to their leaving?  It really seems that the miracles helped their faith, right?

Call me skeptical, but I honestly believe that God knows that our tendency to disbelieve miracles is one of the reasons why He doesn't do them more often.  And that, to me, is why we see Him as absent.  For some reason, we have this idea in us that God should actively show Himself all the time.  We don't want to rely on faith, we want to rely on what our eyes show us.  So when they don't show us that God is very obvious in His work around us, we think that He is absent.

Just to toss it out there, give some thought to it for a few minutes sometime.  What would you really do or think if a miracle happened in front of you?  Would you look for natural explanations?  Would you believe in God even more?  Would you say it's just one of those unexplainable kind of things?  What would you really think if you saw one?