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  “Prayer is the lifeline to God, Lynn,” Pastor Gentry began. “And in a time like this you need the saints collectively interceding on your behalf.”

  “Amen,” Arlene concurred. “Lynn, you know how much we care about you and are praying for you.”

  “In addition to prayer,” Pastor Gentry continued, “I’d like for you to come with us to Hope Springs Church. A pastor I’ve known for years, T. R. Smallwood, has a marvelous testimony of divine healing, and he’s conducting special healing services beginning this Sunday night.”

  Lynn looked up at her pastor, unable to see his face but clearly sensing the conviction in his words. He was not only her pastor but also a spiritual father whose faith in Christ had always been a shining example for her to follow. If he believed that attending this healing service would help her, then there was only one correct response to his request.

  “I’ll be there.”

  “CAN I GET YOU SOME MORE iced tea?” Florence asked the man, who had stopped by the diner for the second time that week.

  He hesitated slightly before handing her his glass.

  “It’s good, isn’t it?”

  He agreed that it was.

  “Made it myself. The secret is to keep a pitcher out in the sun— Wait a minute, I’m not supposed to tell you that!” She started laughing.

  The man smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I won’t tell a soul.”

  “I can believe that—you don’t strike me as much of a talker. You like the pancakes?”

  He nodded. “You make them, too?”

  “No, I just stick to the tea. It’s what I do best.” She put a hand on her hip and leaned against the table. “You know, I couldn’t help but remember that big ol’ tip you left for me last time. Things like that’ll brighten my day like gettin’ roses on Valentine’s Day. You, uh . . . you going to be around town for a while? I wouldn’t mind showing you around.”

  “Thanks, but I’m just passing through.”

  Before walking away, Florence scribbled her phone number on his copy of the bill, just in case, and flashed him a big grin.

  The man took another bite of the buttermilk pancakes and wiped his mouth with the corner of his napkin. He leaned his head slightly to the right, listening to the conversation at the adjacent table. The whole time he’d been at the diner, he’d been overhearing the family of three discussing the health of their seven-year-old son, Eddie.

  Eddie was seated at the table in a wheelchair. His legs were deformed below the knee, unnaturally twisting inward so that his ankles almost laid flat on the wheelchair footrests. As far as the man could perceive without frequently turning around, Eddie was also deaf in addition to his physical handicap. He gleaned this from the conversation between his parents, Andrea and James.

  “I don’t know what more we can do,” the husband said to his wife. “We’ve gone to every specialist and doctor in the region. We’ve been praying every night. I just want our son to have a normal childhood.”

  “I know, James. But we have to keep believing . . . we have to keep trusting in God’s will for Eddie’s life.”

  “I want him to walk, Andrea. I want him . . . to know what it is to catch a baseball with his father. I . . . want him to be able to hear me say . . . I love him.”

  “He knows you love him, James . . .”

  The man took another bite of his pancake, chewing slowly. More than most people, he empathized with Eddie’s parents. For he, too, had been put in a position where a loved one’s physical ailments were beyond a doctor’s care. He knew what it felt like to see a loved one’s life slip away and be powerless to do anything about it.

  However, he’d also been given a gift of healing that he could not deny little Eddie or his parents, if they had the faith and if it was the will of the Lord.

  Lord, is it Your will? he asked silently. Here? In this restaurant?

  The man turned around as Eddie pounded his fork and spoon against his plate, looking at his parents with the lovable smile only a seven-year-old can make.

  The man stood up from his seat, left another nice tip for Florence, and approached the table where James, Andrea, and Eddie sat.

  “Excuse me,” he gently interrupted. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation about your son. I understand that you’re praying for him.”

  James looked at the man somewhat warily before nodding. “Yes. We pray every day for God to heal Eddie. Are you a doctor?”

  The man shook his head. “No, I’m not a doctor. I’m a believer in Jesus, like yourself. I believe God not only can heal your son’s legs, but also He can open Eddie’s ears.”

  “Well, we know God can certainly do that,” Andrea commented, eyeing the stranger with a mixture of interest and a little concern. “God can do all things.”

  “Yes, He can,” the man replied. “Do you mind if I pray for Eddie?”

  Andrea leaned over and whispered in James’s ear.

  “We believe in prayer,” James said. “We pray for him every day, but—”

  “I understand your concern,” the man cut in, “since I’m a total stranger to you, and you don’t know what I might speak over your son. Here’s what I believe, though, and what I will speak over your son. I believe in the healing power of Jesus. I believe that His act of love on the cross not only atoned for our sins, but also took away the curse of infirmity and disease. I believe in the laying on of hands, as Jesus commanded His disciples, that the sick might be healed.”

  “Well, we certainly believe all of that,” James said, looking a little more relieved. “Uh, no . . . no, I don’t think we mind if you were to pray for Eddie. Eddie?” James leaned over and, using sign language, communicated with his son. Eddie looked up at the stranger, smiled, and nodded his head.

  The man walked over to the little boy and knelt down. Florence, leaning against the bar counter, observed the scene with great interest.

  “Hello, Eddie,” he signed, the extent of his knowledge of the language for the hearing impaired. Reaching over, he placed his hands over the boy’s ankles.

  “Lord, be glorified today. I come to You in the name of Jesus. Your Word declares that these signs shall follow those who believe: they will lay hands on the sick and the sick shall recover. I stand in agreement with James and Andrea, who have been praying for the health of their son. Lord, You said the effectual fervent prayer of the righteous avails much. As I lay hands on Eddie, I speak life and health to these ankle bones. I command his ears to be opened in the name of Jesus. I speak health over his body, and command his entire physical body to line up with the Word of God that says we are healed by the wounds of Jesus.”

  After saying these words, the man stood up straight, looked briefly at James and Andrea, and then calmly walked out the diner’s front door and into the afternoon sunshine.

  Chapter Twelve

  TAP, T-TAP, T-TAP, TAP . . .

  Travis’s fingers furiously danced over his computer keys, moving to a mindless rhythm all their own as he hurried to beat the deadline for his next story submission. Despite his chubby frame, he’d always been an excellent typist, thanks largely to his long fingers. They were the fingers of a pianist, his mother had once told him when she’d tried to convince him to take piano lessons many years earlier. That forgettable fiasco had lasted all of one and a half lessons, as Travis possessed neither the patience nor the desire to master anything remotely as complicated as a piano.

  And not that he was really mastering journalism, for that matter, but at least it constituted a job. A job that held enough respectability to keep him from being the butt of all the jokes at the family reunions. His two older, ultra-overachieving siblings, Maynard and Andrea, had both been valedictorians of their respective high school classes, and both had the complementary charisma and good looks to have everyone oohing and aahing over them like they were heirs to royalty.

  Travis, naturally, provided dead-on meaning to the notion of a family’s black sheep. His last name might have been Eve
rett, but that was where the comparison to Maynard and Andrea ended. He’d barely made it out of college, but he hadn’t really cared. He would have been more than content to find a minimum-wage job somewhere, peddling for enough pennies to indulge his gluttonous habits. But his father would have none of that embarrassment and had pulled some strings to get Travis this job at the State six years earlier.

  With a sigh of relief (and five minutes to spare), Travis typed his final period and pressed the key command to save his article. Seconds later, Benny Dodson popped his head over the top of his cubicle. Benny, no doubt, had been listening for the cessation of Travis’s typing.

  “Just finished, huh?” Benny asked smugly. In all likelihood, Benny had finished his article much quicker and would probably enjoy another front-page byline.

  Travis looked up nonchalantly, as if Benny’s insults had no effect on him. “Just finished what? Oh, you mean my article?” He waved his hand dismissively. “Nah—I finished that two days ago. I’ve been working on something else all morning. Something big.”

  Benny laughed, exposing two rows of perfect white teeth. Could anything about Benny Dodson not be perfect?

  “Yeah right, Travis,” he replied, still laughing. “Perhaps this time Ryman will put it on the third page, instead of the last page.”

  Travis gritted his teeth, using every bit of his willpower not to reach up and strangle perfect Benny’s little neck. And maybe knock out a few of those perfect teeth while he was at it.

  “You keep laughing,” he muttered instead, in a tone of voice Benny couldn’t hear. “One day you’re gonna be reading my byline on the front page of not just Metro, but the whole newspaper.”

  “LORD, TAKE ME ON THAT TRAIN to glory . . . I got my boarding pass . . . I’m ready to go this evening . . .”

  T. R. Smallwood’s prayers centered on one theme as he walked the inside perimeter of Hope Springs Church—glory. Anyone who might’ve walked in on him, unfamiliar with what was going on, would’ve thought Smallwood crazy at the very least, delusional at the very most. But T. R. Smallwood was oblivious to anything outside the scope of his eyesight, currently fixated on his open Bible as he walked the sanctuary’s floors. The Bible had been opened to his favorite passage of scripture, 2 Chronicles 7.

  “When Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offerings and the sacrifices; and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. And the priests could not enter the house of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord had filled the Lord’s house.”

  “Ahh . . . yes! That’s what I’m praying for,” TR exclaimed, rejuvenated as he reread the passage aloud.

  “Lord, let Your glory be so thick in this place that miracles will spring forth like the dawning of a thousand sunrises! Let cancerous tumors dry up the second they come inside this place! Let broken bones and broken hearts be healed inside these holy walls! Let blinded eyes be opened and deaf ears be unstopped! Lord, I know that You are the Most High God and that nothing is too hard for You. I believe that there is an anointing in this church to heal the sick and afflicted, and I thank You in advance for a great outpouring of Your power and glory at the healing crusade.”

  This was the secret, Smallwood knew. It all revolved around this—prayer. Every aspect of his ministry, in all the years he’d been in full-time ministry, had been bathed in prayer. His late father had taught him that in both word and deed.

  “Doing ministry work without prayer is like driving an automobile without gas,” he was known to say. “You can be lookin’ fine on the outside with that car all washed and waxed, but if you’re running low on gas, pretty soon that car’s gonna be sputtering, and then it’s gonna stop altogether. Prayer is the gasoline that fuels a ministry’s engine. So when you want to go far in God, fuel up with some high-octane prayer!”

  TR’s prayers were not only high-octane now, they were also further supercharged with personal experience. God had answered his prayer for a personal healing in dramatic fashion—healed right during the middle of a heart attack! There was a huge difference between praying something you believed and praying something you knew. T. R. Smallwood had moved past the realm of belief and into the realm of knowing.

  “I know You as Jehovah-Rapha, the Lord that healeth me,” he now prayed, placing his Bible on the steps of the altar and raising his hands. “I pray this community, and then this whole state, and then this country and world may come to know You as their Healer as well.”

  TR felt the power and presence of the Lord even more strongly then, and he fell, trembling, to his knees. The glory train had pulled into the station, and TR didn’t need to be told twice to get on board.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE FOLLOWING EVENING, the arriving crowd at Hope Springs Church was large enough to create a mini traffic jam for travelers in their cars heading south on Highway 15. The buzz around town had been further fueled by Pastor T. R. Smallwood’s weeklong proclamation that the evening’s healing crusade would be “an opportunity for God’s glory to shine like never before in Sumter County!” After preaching his usual “glory train” sermon in the morning, he’d handed out packets of healing scriptures, encouraging the membership to commit the passages to memory and begin speaking them aloud everywhere they went—the grocery store, the gas station, in their homes, and on their jobs.

  “God responds to His Word,” he reminded the congregation. “When you speak that precious Word and come into agreement with what He’s already said about healing, you create an atmosphere for miracles to happen.”

  Now Brother Sanderson began playing a warm-up melody on the organ while the ushers scrambled to seat what would surely be the largest crowd they’d ever seen. The small sanctuary of Hope Springs comfortably sat 150, but about twice that many people were expected to attend.

  Lynn had arrived early enough with her parents, Pastor Gentry, and the intercessory team leaders to secure seats four rows from the front. After praying over her again, Pastor Gentry had gone to meet with T. R. Smallwood, leaving Lynn with a growing sense of anticipation as she heard the crowd gathering all around her.

  Was this to be her night of healing?

  Lord, I believe that You are a healer . . . I believe my sight can be restored in Jesus’s name . . .

  She heard someone on the organ softly playing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” prompting her to quietly sing along. She heard people steadily coming into the sanctuary, but the noise level remained respectful, almost hushed. It was the anticipation, she thought. Among the whisperings, she heard some people praying in tongues while others spoke healing scriptures aloud.

  T. R. Smallwood’s testimony that he not only had been supernaturally healed during a heart attack but now also had been given the heart of someone half his age had swept through the town of Sumter like fire blazing through a stack of dry kindling. It was common knowledge that heart disease had run through the Smallwood family line, and though TR had been preaching divine healing for years, few people, even Christians, actually thought the old preacher would be living, breathing proof of such healing. In a town where the average age was in the forties and the elderly outnumbered the young almost two to one, healing and health were important topics of discussion.

  “Saints, are we ready to board that train for glory?” T. R. Smallwood’s voice now thundered from the pulpit.

  The congregation stood and began shouting and clapping in response to the pastor’s trademark call to worship.

  “My Bible tells me that in the glory there is no sickness! In the glory there is no disease! In the glory there are no crutches! And the glory shall fall in this house . . . tonight!”

  The shouts from the congregants lasted for several minutes, spurred on by Brother Sanderson’s well-timed organ chords.

  “Many of you have heard my testimony of how God healed my heart,” Smallwood continued. “He used an anointed man to lay hands on me and curse that spirit of infirmity, that spirit of sickness, and drive it right back to
the depths of hell!”

  More shouts from the congregants.

  “Though I have not seen that man since, God has clearly chosen this time as a season of healing for all who will receive it in the name of Jesus Christ. Tonight, those who are sick, those who are lame, those who are blind—we will lay hands on you and declare you healed in the name of—”

  “Oh my Lord!” A woman’s voice suddenly pierced the air. “Oh my Lord!”

  Lynn turned her head at the sound; it seemed as if the woman was sitting behind her a few rows back.

  “My son can hear!” The woman screamed. “And his ankles! His ankles have been straightened out! Lord Jesus, it’s a miracle!”

  Pandemonium broke out all over the sanctuary. As Brother Sanderson began playing chords on the organ, Lynn heard the beating of tambourines, shouts, and handclaps around her. It was as if a spiritual dam had been broken, and a river of praise had been set free for everyone to swim in.

  “Praise God!” someone yelled.

  “What a mighty God we serve!” another exclaimed.

  The spontaneous praise lasted for a few minutes, until Smallwood asked everyone to settle down and directed the woman to testify to what the Lord had done.

  “My name is Andrea Everett,” the woman began, “and this here is my son, Eddie. He was born deaf and with ectrodactylism, a birth defect that fused the bones in his legs together, making him unable to walk. The doctors gave my husband, James, and me all the results from hundreds of medical studies, saying how impossible it was for Eddie to ever walk or hear, but we never stopped believing that God could turn it around for us. We knew that nothing was too hard for the God we serve.”

  “Praise God, sister!” Smallwood exclaimed. “That’s exactly right! And he was healed just now?”

  “Y-yes, well . . . I just happened to look down and notice that Eddie was rotating his ankles around, something he’d never been able to do before. I was about to ask him in sign language how he was able to do that, but . . . but then his eyes just lit up and he said that he could hear! He said that he could . . . hear . . . everything around him, and that he had started to get strength in his ankle bones two days ago.”