A few months ago, Walter and I planted tomato seeds. We started them in a seed starter tray, sprinkling and pressing the tiny black specks into the fresh cups of garden soil. Little green sprouts peeked out of the dirt, then grew leaves. They grew taller and stronger until finally I selected the best two and transplanted them into the garden.

Now, at the end of summer, just a few months after those tiny seeds first touched the soil, two tomato plants stand almost as tall as the little boy who helped plant them. Little round cherry tomatoes are ripening. Soon they’ll be red enough to eat.

It’s amazing. Miraculous, even.

Farming is nothing new. People have been planting seeds and tending them and harvesting their ripe produce since the beginning of the human race. It’s easy to take it for granted: you put the seeds in dirt, give them water and sunlight, and they grow into plants. It happens every day.

The little boy who helped me plant tomato seeds recently had his annual checkup. He was weighed and measured so we could see how much he’d grown in the past year. We talked about growing, how he used to be small like his baby cousin, and that someday he’ll be big and strong like Daddy. I told him that when I first found out he was growing inside me, he was only the size of a tomato seed, and that he grew until he was big enough to come out and live on the outside. 

I once heard someone wonder how the “miracle” of life could truly be a “miracle,” if it happens every day. But when I look at the definition of miracle (“an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs” or “an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment”) I don’t see anything in there that says the mundane can’t be miraculous.

Extraordinary things are happening all around us, all the time. Dough rises. Cats purr. Butterflies know when and where to migrate. Gazanias open in the daylight and close with the sunset. A mother’s body makes milk for her baby. A tiny seed becomes a sturdy plant that produces fruit. These tiny, everyday miracles can easily be taken for granted.

My two children chase raindrops in the driveway. They run with feet and legs that were formed inside my body. They speak with language they learned simply from being spoken to, because their brains were designed to learn language. Drops of water fall from the sky onto their tongues, their arms, their heads. Some of those drops will evaporate back into the atmosphere, form clouds, and fall as rain again. Others sink into the thirsty ground to meet the roots of my crab apple tree, which grew from a seed which came from a tree, thousands of times over since the beginning.

I watch my children play and feel the warmth of joy in my chest as I listen to their delighted squeals. A few short years ago, they didn’t even exist. Now my son is a little boy who can jump and tell stories and write his name. My daughter is a toddler who makes it clearer every day that she is an entire person with her own opinions. 

None of this is anything out of the ordinary. Plants grow. Children play. Rain falls. We live in a world where amazing things happen every day. Maybe that’s the true miracle.