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John Simpson went in for surgery to remove a kidney stone, only to have doctors find that it had disappeared: he credits a prayer wheel of more than 3,000 people that his wife, a Charismatic, organized. Leslie Smith recalls hurtling down a steep hill on her bike when she was seven years old. She began to slip off the seat--and felt hands lift her back up onto the bike. Dorothy Pederson, the most skeptical in the room, believes a miracle saved her husband's life after a brutal mugging in a hotel room seven years ago. John Lashley has had six strokes and two heart attacks. Twice, he says, he was pronounced dead. "Now, this body of mine has been through an awful lot," he says, "but my faith has been up to the task in every phase . because my belief works. The miracle is in what it delivers."
For five days, says Lennie Jernigan, an attorney, "we prayed for our daughter with a passion uncommon to both of us. And we waited for the diagnosis." The parents agreed to exploratory surgery, which carried a 1-in-5 chance of leaving Elizabeth permanently brain damaged. Surgeons removed part of the tumor from the nerve that controls the movement of the right eye. Trying to get at the rest of it was too dangerous. But when they were finished and the pathology reports came back, the news could not possibly have been worse. Their baby was suffering from an extremely rare malignant meningioma, which has killed everyone who ever had it. Her prognosis: continued growth of the aggressive tumor, grievous paralysis and certain death.
The heartbroken parents prayed for strength and understanding. "Of course there was no explanation," recalls Lennie, "only a stony silence. We prayed for Elizabeth and for ourselves; our friends prayed; our church prayed. Betsy and I merely asked that his will be done. We knew that she could be healed if it were his will, but we were also prepared to accept her death."
Even as the faithful flock to seminars and healing services, the Protestant and Catholic hierarchies treat the subject of miracles with great care. For the minister trying to guide parishioners through the eddies of faith and reason, such stories pose a particular challenge. In many churches, the clergy distrust the miraculous for the very reasons that Jesus did. The preacher who affirms that miracles can indeed happen must also be prepared to explain why they do not. Why do some cancers vanish while others consume? Why do people starve if five loaves could feed 5,000? "Miracles can be like crack; you never quite get enough of them," says Clarence Hardy, minister at the Convent Baptist Church in West Harlem, New York City. "The real test of faith is when there aren't any signs; faith is relatively easy if you're standing in front of a miracle."