If each day only 1/8 of the oil burned for an entire day, then the 8th day was as miraculous as the first.
I like the idea that we should look for the miraculous in our day to day experiences. It IS a miracle that oil will light, even if only for one day. It is a miracle that water will put out a fire. It is a miracle that most of us go to sleep at night and wake up the next morning. The laws of Nature are a miracle. But IMO, the fact that the laws were suspended in such a way as to cause a strong flame to burn using only an 1/8 of the fuel, is TRULY miraculous.
The first day’s miracle was also that amidst such massive tumah and shmutz, that somehow ONE single cruse of oil was even able to be found with the Kohein’s seal still upon it, untouched, and pure. I to a MUCH lesser degree l’havdil, experienced a taste of this kind of miracle when we were burglarized many years ago.
The burglar(s) had taken all my jewelry, everything in the bedroom was tossed around and wrecked, in shambles. I was heartbroken, that my lifetime gifts of gold jewelry (more sentimentally important to me than anything else) were gone.
Especially upsetting was the loss of a ring my mom O”H had given me when her mother was nifteres. My Bubby lived with us for over 2 decades, and when she took ill that last year, I had the zechus of taking care of her much of the time. It was my personal Yerusha from Bubby and I wore it as happily as she did. The theft of that one ring brought me to wracking sobs. I know jewelry should not be THAT important, but it was a symbolic loss of HER all over again.
Imagine my shock and profound relief and gratitude to Hashem when I began to clean up the bedroom, after the cops left, and as I knelt down to pick up some clothing that had been strewn around, found that precious ring, that apparently had fallen out of their “loot” bag. It was the only thing left of all my jewelry, other than my wedding ring, that I had been wearing. I will not compare the finding of that ring to the finding of one flask of pure olive oil, but it gives me some small measure of the simcha and relief the Chashmonaim must have felt at that time.