miracles and tender mercies

I've been thinking a lot about miracles and tender mercies lately. I can't remember what triggered it, but for the past year or so I've been watching for tender mercies in my life, and I can honestly say that I see them daily. Just little happenings that are loving gifts from heaven. When things could be much worse but aren't. When something good happens just in the nick of time. An extra measure of something needful. I'm certain that my life has always been full of tender mercies, but I never saw them. It's amazing how many there are when you look for them. It absolutely fills my heart with gratitude over and over.
Miracles are another matter. Perhaps they are just bigger tender mercies. It is heart-breaking to pray for a miracle, deeply and faithfully, and not receive it. But even then, if you look, the absence of a desired miracle is always peppered with tender mercies.
I have witnessed a miracle in the last week. An honest to goodness old-fashioned kind of miracle. A young man who should by all counts should be dead isn't. He is not only alive, but astoundingly well. Doctors are shaking their heads in disbelief. Wife, kids and family are dizzy from the swift roller coaster ride from the depths of despair to the heights of relief and wonder. And I, as bystander, am left pondering tender mercies and miracles and the one who bequeaths to us them all.