Authors: Derek Jackson
Brother Word (18 page)
T
HE SANCTUARY BEGAN FILLING
hours before the healing service’s scheduled start, as South Carolinians from all over made their pilgrimage to Faith Community Church. Television crews from three Columbia stations, WIS-NBC, WOLO-ABC, and WLTX-CBS, were on hand with their reporters covering the events on the church’s front lawn. The outreach team had organized a massive effort urging sick people to come to the house of God for prayer, an effort that coincided with the printing of the mystery-man newspaper articles. The combined effect of both fostered expectation among Christians and curiosity among non-Christians.
“God has given us a tremendous opportunity.” Pastor Gentry spoke to the guest ministers and altar workers, addressing them in the conference room a half hour before the service’s start. “I’m told there are several television camera crews here as well as newspaper reporters from as far away as Charleston. Now, they may be here for the hype, but we are here for the manifestation of God’s healing power. We’ve all been fasting and praying, believing God to pour out His Spirit tonight, and like never before, I believe the season for healing is
now
. People are genuinely concerned about rising health care costs, the spread of AIDS and other terminal illnesses, and it is imperative that our faith and trust must be in Christ. Now, God may work through doctors, the government, and other means, but what would happen if the church returned to an old-fashioned outpouring of the Holy Spirit like in the book of Acts? What if people got a hold of faith and started laying hands on their children daily, anointing them with oil and speaking the Word of God over them?
“For whatever reason, we have been blessed with a great opportunity. The testimonies of Sister Lynn and others have shown that God is moving by His Spirit here in South Carolina, as He is doing all over the world. If revival is to begin at the house of God, then let it begin with us.”
“CHURCH, ARE YOU READY
to board that train for glory?” T. R. Smallwood had been invited to the healing service as Pastor Gentry’s special guest, and the standing-room-only crowd filling the five-thousand-seat sanctuary of Faith Community Church responded enthusiastically. On cue, the praise team took their places at the front and began singing an uptempo worship song.
“Jesus, we worship and we praise Your name . . .”
Sitting four rows from the front, Travis squirmed in his seat as he silently cursed having been
tricked
into coming to church yet again by his sister. And Andrea had come with both barrels shooting this time, using his nephew and a free dinner at Damon’s as bait. But maybe the service wouldn’t be so bad—two hours at the most, perhaps—and with all the news coverage tonight, it wasn’t such a bad idea to be present. His older brother, Maynard, was seated to his left, clapping his hands and looking at ease amidst all the people worshipping Jesus.
Figures as much
,Travis thought.
Maynard fits in anywhere he goes . . .
To his right sat his nephew, Eddie, and Travis
still
could not grasp how a boy deaf and disabled for the first seven years of life could be so . . . instantly healed. It was enough to make Travis wonder about the reality of God.
“And now we lift our hands . . . and now we lift our hearts,”
the praise team sang.
Officially, Travis was agnostic, not an atheist. He accepted there might be a higher power of some sort; surely human beings (with all their shortcomings and limited knowledge) couldn’t be the highest life-form. But that this higher form was Andrea’s neatly packaged “Jesus as the Son of God” ideology was not something he could believe.
Twenty minutes later, the praise and worship period ended and Pastor Gentry approached the center pulpit.
“Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Faith Community Church, where faith is increasing every day. And faith is certainly increasing here for God to heal the sick, to open the blinded eyes, and to cause the lame to walk! Amen?”
The congregation responded with another enthusiastic shout.
“The Bible tells us in Revelation 12:11 that we overcome the devil by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony. With that in mind, let’s create an atmosphere of faith and expectancy by hearing a few testimonies of God’s healing power. First, I’d like to introduce you to a young boy who was born deaf and with ectrodactylism, a birth defect that made him unable to walk. His doctors had been resigned to the fact that he would be in such a condition for the rest of his life. But how many of you know that with God,
nothing
is impossible?”
“Amen!” someone shouted. “Hallelujah!”
“God healed little Eddie Everett’s body, and he’s now a living, breathing testimony to what the Lord can do. I’d like you all to put your hands together and give a great big Faith Community welcome to Eddie as he comes and shares his story!”
Everyone stood and clapped as Eddie walked up the aisle and to the center podium. Pastor Gentry warmly hugged the boy, then released the microphone from its holder and handed it to him.
“H-hello. My name is Eddie Everett. I was born deaf and my two legs never worked right. I was always in a wheelchair and I couldn’t hear anything. My mom and dad taught me sign language and helped me and stuff, but . . . but it was still hard. It was hard to watch baseball games on TV and know that I’d never get a chance to hit a home run and run around the bases. My mom and dad talked to me about Jesus every day. They taught me to pray to Jesus every night . . . and . . . Jesus would help me hear and walk. And that’s what Jesus did! After mom and dad and the nice man we met at the restaurant prayed for me, we were at this church . . . and all of a sudden, I felt my legs tingling . . . they were gettin’ stronger . . . and then I heard people talking. I never heard people talking before—that was awesome!”
“Glory to God!” someone shouted.
“Mom and Dad praise Jesus every day for helping me hear and walk. And I do, too. And you know what? Yesterday, my dad signed me up for T-ball. And the first thing I’m gonna do when I hit my home run is look up to Jesus and tell Him thanks!”
There was not a dry eye in the place as people began standing and clapping. Even Travis couldn’t deny his nephew’s moving testimony. He was genuinely happy for Eddie—it seemed only right that the kid should be able to play baseball and enjoy the carefree days of one’s youth.
“Wasn’t that tremendous?” Pastor Gentry asked, now speaking again into the microphone.
“And a little child shall lead them . . .”
THE EVERETTS LEFT
Faith Community Church almost three hours after the service began, although many people were still at the altar, praying to receive their healing. Due to the late hour, Andrea and Maynard decided to postpone dinner at Damon’s until the following day.
“You mean I came out here for nothing?” Travis asked Andrea, pulling her to the side and out of earshot of anyone else. He didn’t know whether he could hide his irritation and anger. To waste an entire evening and not even get a barbecue sandwich for his troubles?
“How can you even
say
that?” Andrea retorted. She forcibly removed her brother’s hand from her arm. “That’s a horrible thing to say. You heard Eddie’s testimony, as well as the testimonies of so many others. Are you telling me you weren’t moved by that?”
Travis reluctantly admitted that Eddie’s testimony was moving. “But you didn’t tell me I was going to be in that church almost three hours!”
“There’s no time limit on the move of God. You think the people in there getting healed of cancer are complaining about how long the service is lasting?”
“You really believe in this stuff, huh?”
“Yes, and you should, too. Especially now. You can try and write Jesus off, but you know James and I have been praying for Eddie ever since we took him home from the hospital. We kept the faith, and now Jesus has healed our son.”
Travis shrugged. He couldn’t stop Andrea from believing what she wanted to believe. He admitted he had no explanation for what happened to Eddie, but that didn’t necessarily mean Jesus was responsible. Didn’t things like this happen on that television show
Unsolved Mysteries
? Unexplained phenomena, UFOs, and all that?
“You’re joining us for dinner tomorrow, right?”
Travis cracked a sheepish smile. “If Maynard’s still buying, yeah. I’ll be there with bells on.”
After settling for a half dozen tacos from Taco Bell to slake his late-night hunger cravings, Travis returned home thirty minutes later. Switching on his living room light, he headed straight for the La-Z-Boy, kicking away discarded T-shirts and magazines cluttering the floor. He’d been meaning to clean up for some time now, but he knew such an activity would be pointless—why go to all the trouble? He lived by himself and couldn’t remember the last time he had company over. The way he figured it, the only company he needed was his big-screen TV and a cupboard full of snacks. And tonight, the half-eaten bag of Doritos on the coffee table would be his snack while he caught the midnight
SportsCenter
edition.
Before turning on the television, though, he noticed the red light flashing on his answering machine. That in and of itself was rare, because not only did he not usually have company over, but there weren’t too many people who bothered calling him. And even fewer who would leave a message on his answering machine. He walked over and pressed the button.
“Hey, Travis, this is Stu.”
Stu Frazier was a friend that Travis had asked to do a little extra digging on their mystery man. Though Stu was now a detective with the local police department, he had grown up with the Everett family, and had even dated Andrea for a while during high school. But that relationship hadn’t worked out because Stu, like Travis, hadn’t been keen on having organized religion as a priority in his life. And Andrea, committed Christian that she was, wasn’t about to be involved with someone who couldn’t share Jesus with her. Still, Travis and Stu had remained close over the years, and Travis had always longed to work on a story where having a trusted source in the police department would come in handy.
“We found something,” Stu’s voice continued talking. “One of the cameras at the train station picked up your guy, talking on a pay phone. In one shot, the camera showed him placing his full palm on the side of the phone. Nobody else had smudged that print by the time my guy looked at it, so I had him lift a nice extraction. After running that through my contact at CPD, we got a match. Your mystery man . . . well, he’s no longer a mystery. We’ve got a name.”
T
HE BROOK’S SLOW-MOVING CURRENT
produced a calming effect on Chance as he skipped tiny pebbles across the water’s surface. The tip of the sun peeking over the tops of the pine trees was a beautiful sight to awaken his sleepy eyes, though it also brought back many memories. He used to come to this secluded spot in the mornings with Nina, where they would sit and hold each other, watching the sun rise over the horizon. Sometimes they would even strip down to their birthday suits and take a dip in the brook, the kind of romantic thing people did in the movies all the time. Chance didn’t think skinny-dipping was so romantic in real life, but it was worth it because they almost always ended up making love.
“God, I just don’t know what You want me to do,” he now spoke aloud, still skipping pebbles. His best tosses sometimes got five bounces from the tiny pebbles across the water.
The nagging theme of purpose weighed on his mind heavily from time to time, and though his personal purpose in life should have been clear (given the gift God had blessed him with), that wasn’t always the case.
A preacher in Birmingham, Alabama, once prophesied that Chance was to bring God’s divine healing to the church through signs and wonders, ushering in a great end-time revival. And of course, there was the Floyd Waters prophecy, that he was “chosen by God to bring healing to the nations of the world and that through his hands many shall be healed and testify to God’s healing power.” And then of course, the healings. The old man with the bent-over back in Vicksburg. The lady with carpal tunnel syndrome in Auburn. The mother of two in Marietta whose cancerous tumor had disappeared while he prayed for her. The teenage boy in Starkville, paralyzed from the waist down from a motorcycle accident. The young boy in Aiken who’d been diagnosed with leukemia. Pastor T. R. Smallwood. Eddie Everett. Lynn Harper. So many people . . . so many families and lives changed. So many churches who now prayed for their sick and shut-in members not merely as a formality, but with a fervent faith that
believed
God could heal them. All because some stranger had stopped by their church, prayed over someone with an impossible-seeming condition, and had gotten results similar to the miracles in the book of Acts.
“God, I just want to love again,” Chance whispered. “I just want to stop running from my past . . .”
My grace is sufficient for You . . .
It was the same answer the apostle Paul had been given to his persistent question asked of God in 2 Corinthians 12:8, but the power of the response was momentarily lost on Chance. The past few days had produced too much pain—first with the newspaper article in South Carolina, then running into that strange woman on the train who looked just like Nina, and finally coming home to find his pop drunk.
“I’m tired of the pain, God. I’m tired . . .”
He fired another pebble across the brook’s surface, but this time the tiny rock didn’t skip across the surface. Instead, it sunk directly to the water’s bottom.
TRAVIS HAD NOT BEEN ABLE
to sleep, so anxious was he to meet with Stu after hearing Stu’s message. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so excited. Then again, up until now his life hadn’t produced much to be excited about.
He walked into IHOP at 8 a.m. and found Stu seated in a corner booth, his plate piled high with pancakes and syrup. Even though the man was of a slender build, if there was anyone capable of putting away more food than Travis, it was Stu.