Do miracles happen any more? This season is full of historical ones among all the different faiths, but what about here and now?

Personally, I have a very rational approach to faith — believing in its utilitarian aspects and suspicious of what goes against the laws of nature. However, my instinctive scepticism was challenged by an experience I had at a special seminar that took place for rabbis from the ranks of Reform Judaism.

Part of the programme was a meditation led by Rabbi Lionel Blue. We were all sitting in a circle and there was an unlit candle in the middle. Lionel spoke for a while, about how hard it can sometimes be when we try to think about God and the meaning of our lives. Then he said he would light the candle — it would be a useful image to focus on as we entered a period of silence and contemplation.

Now for some reason the candle would not light — it was a large fat candle, had already been used before, and the wick had burnt down into a hollow within the candle. Someone else tried to light it, but also failed.

“Never mind,” said Blue, “we'll just have to imagine it burning,” and so we got on with being silent. After a while — perhaps half an hour — he said that if people wanted to share anything with the group they could do so.

A few people did, and then one person (I'll call him Derek) said how upset he had been that the candle would not light — for him it had signified something that had gone wrong in his own life recently, and how he had lost confidence in himself as a result. During that half-hour silence he had been unable to think of anything else but the candle and he'd been trying mentally to relight it and at the same time to rekindle the inner spirit within himself.

Now while he had been saying this I was looking at the candle, and I gave a start, for it seemed to me that there was a tiny light. I leant forward in my chair — perhaps I was mistaken — perhaps it was just the reflection from a wall light; but there was a nervous flickering, and other people had noticed it too. Within a few moments it had become a bright flame, steady, confident and definitely ablaze. Derek gasped, was astonished, and then smiled broadly.

Had Derek lit the candle by sheer willpower? Had God lit the candle as a sign that Derek's period of turmoil was over and a new light was dawning? Or had the candle been smouldering invisibly all the time and then gradually become more obvious? Lionel Blue and the person who had tried to help him were both convinced that they had not lit the candle.

To be honest, it did not matter very much, because the significance of all miracles is not how they happen but what their effect is, and in this case the impact it had made on the despondent person who had felt hopeless and who now felt a new sense of enthusiasm.

Maybe the candle had been imperceptibly burning drowsily all along, but it had reminded him of the value of hope, the power of optimism, and opened his eyes to a more positive outlook on life. The incident had rekindled his spirits even if there was a thoroughly rational explanation to it all.

It is the same with us: often we are so weighed down with a problem that we cannot fathom out who we are or where we are heading; then something — a candle, a person's kind word, music from a passing car — can clear the haze and help us to find a way forward. Often, it is a matter of inner blindness: being blind to the possibilities around us and then suddenly seeing the light.

That is the real miracle, without any thunderbolts overhead or earthquakes below, but when something inside us moves and our eyes are more open than they were before.

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain is minister of Maidenhead Synagogue and author of The Jews of England