Did Jesus really walk on water? Or maybe he just surfed on a patch of ice. That's the conclusion of a 2006 scientific article published in everyone's favorite bedtime reading item—The Journal of Paleolimnology. The article was titled "Is There a Paleolimnological Explanation for 'Walking on Water' in the Sea of Galilee?" Dr. Doron Nof, an expert in oceanography and limnology (the study of lakes), and his co-authors speculate that an odd combination of atmospheric conditions may cause rare patches of floating ice on the Sea of Galilee. According to their calculations, the chances of this floating ice phenomenon happening are less than once every thousand years. But those odds didn't deter them from questioning whether Jesus walked on water after all. Perhaps Jesus just surfed a patch of floating ice.

To be honest, I'm not sure which one would be more amazing. Surfing a piece of floating ice across the Sea of Galilee would take miraculous balance. And if those patches of ice appear only once every thousand years, it would take miraculous timing too. I'd love to see a high-definition, slow motion instant replay of either one—Jesus walking on water or surfing on ice. But Dr. Nof's theory may reveal more about the human psyche than the circumstances behind Jesus' miracle. We have a natural tendency to explain away what we cannot explain. And that's why most of us miss the miracle.