Run-of-the-Mill Miracle

Kristi McKay feels briefly dizzy as she leaves for a housecleaning job. She first stops at a store for supplies but cannot find the wallet she always keeps in her purse, so she returns home. There she discovers Samantha and the babysitter, Angela, unconscious on the floor. Both have been poisoned by carbon monoxide.

At the hospital, Angela awakens, but Samantha remains unresponsive with dangerous levels of carbon monoxide in her blood. Grady is terrified that his little sister may suffer permanent harm. He prays for her to wake, but waiting without an answer becomes almost unbearable.

Kristi asks Whit to take Grady to Whit’s End until Samantha’s condition changes. Grady asks whether God still performs the enormous miracles described in the Bible. Whit believes He does, though sometimes His work is quieter than people expect and goes unrecognized.

Searching for the kind of miracle that cannot be overlooked, Grady enters an Imagination Station program. He meets a feverish boy named Marcus who has been unconscious for days and is expected to die. Without warning, the boy sits up, speaks, and stands with his fever completely gone. Grady assumes it may be an ordinary recovery rather than a miracle.

Marcus’s father, Jacob, returns from a journey and asks exactly when the fever vanished. He explains that ten miles away, at that very moment, Jesus told him his son would live. Grady now sees that the healing could not be a coincidence. He wishes Jesus were physically present in Odyssey so Samantha could be healed just as quickly.

The program next takes Grady to a city dying in a long famine. A widow and her son, Seth, possess only a handful of flour and a little oil for one final meal. When the prophet Elijah asks for bread, the woman trusts his promise that God will keep her flour and oil from running out until rain returns.

Grady protests that she is giving away food needed to keep her child alive. Yet after she prepares bread for Elijah, the nearly empty flour bin is suddenly almost full. The family now has enough food for months. Grady has witnessed unmistakable provision, but he still wonders why such signs seem confined to the distant past.

Whit introduces him to Joanne Allen, who recalls doing mission work in Chile thirty years earlier. She and her friend Pat drove through a nighttime snowstorm to help a woman experiencing a dangerous childbirth on a mountain. They prayed as they traveled an old road beside a steep cliff, and Joanne’s nursing knowledge helped mother and baby survive.

The next morning, the women learned that the road had been closed for months because portions were too narrow for their car. Their tire tracks nevertheless showed that they had traveled it. Joanne believes God kept the vehicle from falling because He wanted them to reach the woman and child. Grady remains uncertain, suggesting that perhaps Joanne merely drove well.

When news comes that Samantha is beginning to stir, Grady and Whit return to the hospital and pray. Whit cautions that prayer does not force God to grant the miracle they choose. He once prayed for his wife to live, but she died. In time, he saw God work through that loss, including the creation of Whit’s End and the many people reached there. He now asks for whatever God knows is truly best.

The doctor reports that Samantha’s tests look good and that she should recover after a few more days of observation. Only then does Kristi find her wallet in its usual pocket - the very place she searched at the store. Her unexplained failure to see it sent her home at exactly the right time. The doctor says even a few more minutes of exposure could have caused Samantha serious brain damage. As Samantha awakens and speaks, Grady recognizes that God has answered through a simple event that becomes a life-saving miracle.