My name is Steve Cunningham. My wife, Mary Anne and I have been members at Lake Avenue Church since 1975. We joined Lake soon after coming to Pasadena where I worked at Caltech as a Visiting Associate. Because of Lake, we chose to stay in Pasadena when I left Caltech. I changed careers and went to work for the Space and Communications Group at Hughes Aircraft Company (now Boeing Space Systems) where I have worked on the design of satellites for 45 years, finally retiring in 2022.

One of the highlights of my career at Hughes was to be selected in 1984 as one of four people from Hughes to fly on the Space Shuttle as a Payload Specialist. We trained in 1985, and I would have flown in 1986 except, as you may remember, the Challenger accident occurred in January 1986 and our part in the Payload Specialist program was cancelled. I didn’t get to fly in space, but I did learn how to go to the bathroom in zero gravity.

I am a scientist. I have a PhD in Theoretical Solid State Physics followed by post-doctoral studies for 6 years. I have published 50 articles in scientific journals. I really am a scientist, and I must keep telling myself that because I believe things that most scientists scoff at. I believe in miracles.

Scientists are trained to study the physical universe, and there is the basic assumption that the world operates by a set of physical laws, and these laws are never broken. This is a worldview that is trained into scientists, and I have had a lot of training. But I believe in miracles—the kind where the laws of the universe are set aside temporarily, and things change. We read about these in the Bible, but I believe in them because I have seen them myself. The big change to my worldview occurred when I was 29 years old, and I witnessed a blind woman instantly healed in response to a simple prayer. I was in full analysis mode when it happened. And what I know is this: before the prayer she was blind, and after, she could see. That event was followed by a recommitment to Jesus and soon thereafter coming to Lake Avenue Church.

Miracles are still happening if you are looking, and some are happening here at Lake. I have been a first-hand witness to three. Of course, miracles don’t happen often in your life. That’s why they are called “miracles.” But I am now convinced that it is “un-scientific” to deny the existence of supernatural miracles. Personal testimony of miracles should be approached with skepticism, but they are not all false. God is still at work all the time. Perhaps the most important miracle for you and me is that of a transformed life which we can see happen a lot.

A God-centered worldview is important, but the real change in my life, and Mary Anne’s, came about because of the community at Lake. We quickly joined an adult Sunday school class and became members of a small group Bible study. It was the regular meeting with other growing Christians, who were facing the same daily problems that we faced, that led to a steadily growing understanding of how the mighty God of the universe cares for us, leads us, and talks to us.