Ron Walker
This morning, while lying in bed, I looked out my window and caught sight of the red oak tree we planted 22 years ago. It glittered as if it were made of gold. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It was unearthly, unnatural.
My conscious mind did not believe what I was seeing, so of course I tried to figure out what was going on. Winter had taken ahold of the leaves and most of the time they were a wrinkly brown, but not this morning. Now they were gold. It was a miracle.
Now the day is ending, and I watched a bewitching movie called “The Girl Who Believes in Miracles.”
The story is based on the possibility that miracles can come true and Sarah, the young girl in the movie is involved with several miracle. Of course, doubt resound at every turn. Her parents and her minister are convinced that Sarah’s miracles are either coincidental or completely invalid. It starts when Sarah’s brother and his girlfriend go fishing and take her with them and they find a dead bird. The brother and his girlfriend go off by themselves and when they return, they find Sarah, kneeling beside the bird and praying for God to bring the bird back to life. Within moments, the bird revives and flies away. They return home and Sarah tells her mother about the bird and her mother is busy and replies “That’s nice dear.”
The story unfolds. A dog is hit by a car, Sarah kneels alongside the dog, quietly prays and the dog lives. Her best friend, a young boy whose spinal injury keeps him from moving his toes, asks Sarah if she will pray for him, she does. He and his parents show his gruff, pragmatic skeptical doctor signs of movement and he says he doesn’t know what happened, but he is sure prayer had nothing to do with it. A human-interest television news caster happens to overhear the goings on and it becomes a local news item and early one morning Sarah finds a group of parents and their children standing in her front yard. Against her parent’s wishes, she walks out to a blind girl, Sarah takes the girls hands, preys and although blurry eyed, the girl sees. Sarah holds hands with a boy in a wheelchair and hesitantly, he stands.
The plot of the movie centers around Sarah and her encounter with Jesus and bringing the towns people together. Movies are very careful to be middle of the road when it comes to matters of faith but this one pulls out all the stops. Perhaps it’s true, maybe people actually do have encounters with spiritual beings. Somewhere in the Bible it says “With God, all things are possible.” Perhaps if I go to bed tonight with that thought on my mind I’ll awaken in the morning and see the red oak leaves shimmering in gold or better yet, celebrate just being alive.
Ron Walker can be reached at walkover@gmx.com.
