More than 12 years ago, an 11-year-old boy sat in Primary convinced that the hymn “The Miracle” had been written just for him.
In many ways, it had.
When Shawna Edwards, then a Primary music leader from Lehi, Utah, began composing the song, she wasn’t thinking of just one child. She was thinking of every child in her Primary.
Each month, the Primary children focused on a different gospel theme. In August, that theme was “Jesus is a God of miracles.” Edwards searched for a song that included that message but could not find one.
“There wasn’t a song out there that had that phrase in it,” Edwards said.
So she decided to write one herself.
The chance came during a cross-country drive as she took her son to medical school.
“I didn’t have a guitar,” she said. “I didn’t have an instrument at all, except my voice and a notebook.”
During the 20-hour drive, Edwards pieced together both the lyrics and the melody. She began with the familiar miracles of Jesus Christ, such as walking on water, healing the leper, giving sight to the blind and helping the lame walk.
But she knew the song needed to do more than recount miracles from long ago. She wanted today’s children to understand what those miracles meant for them.
“I will never forget the moment,” Edwards said. “It just came to me that there’s a very tight connection. A miracle that He performed for them, and for all of us, that impacts every minute, every hour, every day. That’s the Atonement.”
That realization transformed the song. Rather than focusing solely on Christ’s physical miracles, Edwards centered the hymn on His Atonement and the hope, healing and forgiveness it offers children every day.
After returning home, Edwards added the accompaniment and took the finished song back to her Primary.
She remembered the group of 11-year-old boys sitting in the back row who were normally unwilling to sing each week. As she wrote the hymn, she hoped to create something they would actually want to sing.
More than a decade later, Edwards recalled the moment the children first sang the hymn.
“When I got home and taught the song to them, the 11-year-old boys sang it with gusto,” said Edwards. “There was a boy on the back row, who was my next-door neighbor, who told his mom ‘She wrote this for me.’”
Edwards has written many hymns, including “Because,” which was also added to the new global hymn book “Hymns for Home and Church.” Her very first song, “Do You Have Room?” reached over 1.8 million views.
While “The Miracle” is not Edwards’ first hymn to be published in the new hymn book, she says there is something meaningful about the song, found in the simple phrase “Jesus is a God of miracles.”
“Every one of us needs miracles,” Edwards said. “We have things in our life that are really hard. We have things with our loved ones that are really hard, and to know that Jesus is a God of miracles and nothing is impossible to Him gives us this glorious hope — this eternal hope that these things will be better.”
Edwards continued that the Lord helped her in every aspect of writing the hymn.
“I wrote a little song,” she said. “The Lord multiplied it. He made it great. I have seen Him create miracles with very flawed efforts, just time and time again.”
The hymn teaches that Jesus Christ still works miracles today, and Edwards believes that message relates to everyone’s life.
“He can just make a miracle out of every good little thing we do,” she said.
1. Jesus walked upon the water.
He stilled the storm and calmed the angry sea.
With His hands He healed the leper;
He made the lame to walk, the blind to see.
He fed a thousand people with a loaf or two of bread;
And when a ruler’s daughter died, He raised her from the dead.
Jesus is a God of miracles;
Nothing is at all impossible to Him.
But I know this:
Of all His miracles, the most incredible must be
The miracle that rescues me.
2. Jesus bled and died to save me,
A price that only He could pay alone.
When He rose again, He gave me
The greatest gift the world has ever known;
So I can be forgiven ev’ry time that I repent,
And someday He will lift me up to live with Him again.
Jesus is a God of miracles;
Nothing is at all impossible to Him.
But I know this:
Of all His miracles, the most incredible must be
The miracle that rescues me.
3. I know He will walk beside me
And heal my wounds and calm my troubled heart,
Always there to bless and guide me—
My song at night, my bright and morning star.
His love and grace will never end; each day they bless anew.
My name is graven on His hands, and yours is too.
Jesus is a God of miracles;
Nothing is at all impossible to Him.
But I know this:
Of all His miracles, the most incredible must be
The miracle that rescues me.
The miracle that rescues you and me.
The Savior said, “I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:16). the nail marks on His hands are evidence of His great atoning sacrifice for all. He will always remember each of us.
