I finished reading an amazing book today. I’m not very familiar with magic-realism as a genre, but I think this book, a work of fiction, would qualify. There were many things to love about it, but as a writer, I found myself sitting back several times in awe of the magic the author wove, not only in his story world, but in the way he told his tale. I always expend a great deal of effort on plotting, trying to make certain that events unfold logically and make sense. In real life, seemingly random things happen and you must accept it because it is. However, so the conventional wisdom goes, nothing too convenient can happen in fiction, because a satisfying story isn’t built on coincidences.

So imagine, then, a man recounting a story of himself in dire circumstances, being beaten by captors who hate him. A listener asks why the captors let the man live, and he rages, because he does not know why.

Under normal circumstances, solving a plot problem such as a deadly situation by deciding that the captors will simply free their victim is too convenient. It is unbelievable and normally, it feels like a cop-out, as if the author didn’t know how to get out of the situation he set up, so he invented an implausible out. This is called deux ex machina — god out of the machine — and it includes an author bringing a miracle of God into the story in a contrived way.

Only it didn’t feel like that at all when I read it. Magically, the author conveyed — between the lines — that Something larger was at work, Something that the main character did not yet know or understand, Something powerful enough to save him when he should not have expected saving. Brilliant.

As I read in my Bible this morning, I came to Matthew 12:38, where some of the scribes and Pharisees ask Jesus for a sign (or an “attesting miracle” as it’s footnoted). A crucial difference between this request and the ones made by the blind, lame, and poor Jesus encountered? The scribes and Pharisees essentially wanted a magic show. They wanted Jesus to perform a trick, so they could then analyze how He did it — and likely accuse Him of fraud or worse.

Jesus didn’t take their bait. He had nothing to prove to those faithless men that He needed to work contrived miracles for their benefit. The work He came to do was to die for the sins of humanity and rise again victorious over death, saving a fallen race that should not (outside the promises of God) have expected saving, and He accomplished His task, brilliantly.