I began to pray for a miracle.
They supposedly happen all the time, and I’d read about them in newspapers. People
regaining use of their limbs after being told they’d never walk again, or somehow
surviving a terrible accident when all hope was lost. Every now and then a traveling
preacher’s tent would be set up outside of Beaufort, and people would go there to watch as
people were healed. I’d been to a couple, and though I assumed that most of the healing
was no more than a slick magic show, since I never recognized the people who were
healed, there were occasionally things that even I couldn’t explain. Old man Sweeney, the
baker here in town, had been in the Great War fighting with an artillery unit behind the
trenches, and months of shelling the enemy had left him deaf in one ear. It wasn’t an act—
he really couldn’t hear a single thing, and there’d been times when we were kids that we’d
been able to sneak off with a cinnamon roll because of it. But the preacher started praying
feverishly and finally laid his hand upon the side of Sweeney’s head. Sweeney screamed
out loud, making people practically jump out of their seats. He had a terrified look on his
face, as if the guy had touched him with a white-hot poker, but then he shook his head and
looked around, uttering the words “I can hear again.” Even he couldn’t believe it. “The
Lord,” the preacher had said as Sweeney made his way back to his seat, “can do anything.
The Lord listens to our prayers.”
So that night I opened the Bible that Jamie had given me for Christmas and began to
read. Now, I’d heard all about Bible in Sunday school or at church, but to be frank, I just
remembered the highlights—the Lord sending the seven plagues so the Israelites could
leave Egypt, Jonah being swallowed by a whale, Jesus walking across the water or raising
Lazarus from the dead. There were other biggies, too. I knew that practically every chapter
of the Bible has the Lord doing something spectacular, but I hadn’t learned them all. As
Christians we leaned heavily on teachings of the New Testament, and I didn’t know the
first things about books like Joshua or Ruth or Joel. The first night I read through Genesis,
the second night I read through Exodus. Leviticus was next, followed by Numbers and
then Deuteronomy. The going got a little slow during certain parts, especially as all the
laws were being explained, yet I couldn’t put it down. It was a compulsion that I didn’t
fully understand.
It was late one night, and I was tired by th e time I eventually reached Psalms, but
somehow I knew this was what I was looking for. Everyone has heard the Twenty-third
Psalm, which starts, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” but I wanted to read the
others, since none of them were supposed to be more important than the others. After an
hour I came across an underlined section that I assumed Jamie had noted because it meant
something to her. This is what it said:
I cry to you, my Lord, my rock! Do not be deaf to me,
for if you are silent, I shall go down to the pit like the
rest. Hear my voice raised in petition as I cry to you for
help, as I raise my hands, my Lord, toward your holy of