It is not just Mary Self who claims prayers have been miraculously answered. Jean Neil was cured of 27 years of paralysis when she attended a Pentecostal rally at the Birmingham NEC in 1988. When the pastor told her to get up and walk she literally ran from her wheelchair towards the stage with tears running down her face. Doctors and surgeons were at a loss to explain it.

And there are the 7,000 people who claim to have been healed at Lourdes, 66 cases of which have been officially declared as miraculous by the Vatican.

But if God really is answering prayers and altering the natural course of events through miracles, it raises a host of questions. Why are some helped but not others? Why do the virtuous suffer while the wicked are rewarded? These questions are as old as religion itself, and today we are no closer to answering them than philosophers of old.

Perhaps we should heed the advice of Albert Einstein: ‘There are only two ways to live your life: one is as though nothing is a miracle; the other is as though everything is a miracle.’