DVD Release Date: October 16, 2013
Rating: NR
Genre: Documentary
Run Time: 59 minutes
Director: Chris Lang
Sometimes, slicing unexpectedly through the fog of daily life, the supernatural appears. Skeptics and doubters may abound, but sometimes logic, reason, and common sense just aren’t enough to explain away otherworldly occurrences.
Chris Lang of Lifestreams Media (When Mourning Breaks) seeks to “pull back a curtain” with his new film About Miracles, a movie that presents stories which reveal the “One who’s still in charge.” About Miracles takes a peek into four very different stories, and allows four individuals to share why they believe God has intervened into their lives in a powerful way.
Everyone has faith in something, right? But Brian, an immigrant seeking permanent citizenship in the United States, was beginning to lose faith that his family would ever make it through enough hoops to avoid deportation. Then one night when he was working at a convenient store, he saw Jesus in an unlikely place. His store was robbed and he was shot – left for dead. His miraculous story of survival and healing resulted not only in the strengthening of his family’s faith, but hope for a new home in the U.S. through unexpected avenues.
“The scar that remains on his neck will always help me remember that Jesus is alive,” Brian’s wife shares.
The second story told in About Miracles parallels Jacob wrestling with the Lord when he said, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” The young woman in this vignette had her heart set on overseas missions, but she was working a job selling Christians books door-to-door that rarely brought in much money, let alone enough to cover a trip to China. So she prayed, worked hard, trusted in God’s provision, and as the days went by, she started to see the blessings he provided for her. She and all her colleagues were floored by the miraculous events that followed her prayers.
The people in About Miracles were attuned to God’s spirit and leading. They are men and women sensitive to following the voice of God even when common sense says: It’s Impossible. They are families on the brink of doubt, depression, and even death whose eyes are opened to God’s mighty intervening hand in their lives.
However, watching these inspiring and hopeful vignettes got me wondering…do we ever reduce God to miracles? Of course miraculous, inexplicable events occur. Sometimes it’s hard to deny the hand of God at work. But when a news reporter said of Brian after he was shot, “God had to have been on the Clerk’s side, ‘cause it looks like he’s gonna make it” – what does that say about the many other gun-violence victims who die of similar wounds? Does that mean God is not on their side? If God heals those he loves…then why are so many left unhealed?
But About Miracles didn’t leave me with this incomplete version of God, a God who only demonstrates favor by miracles. The fourth and final story told in the documentary follows a man named Neville who was blinded as a child after sustaining severe injuries in a car accident. His parents prayed for restored vision, fasted over him, and even had Neville anointed several times. But God seemed silent in the face of their anguish, and Neville remained blind. He is still blind today.
You see, although he didn’t receive his “miracle,” he views his life as miraculous nonetheless, saying:
“I believe that if someone asked God for a miracle, and he didn’t answer it in the way they were expecting, that’s an opportunity for them to be stretched.”
Neville is a professional musician and singer who has performed not only in tiny churches but at the White House and Carnegie Hall. Throughout his life Neville has found ways to grow as a person and find God in unusual circumstances. He currently lives an incredibly independent life, and could hardly be considered handicapped even with his blindness. His wife says of him, “when I see Neville…I don’t see someone with limitations” and his agent noted, “I do think the greatest miracles sometimes are not the most visible miracles.”
About Miracles provides a twofold lesson to believers. One is the reminder that nothing is too big for God to handle, and sometimes he intervenes in the most amazing and supernatural ways. The second, and perhaps most important lesson, is that the absence of observable miracles does not equal the absence of God. Many forces are at work in our world; we are all subject to sin and disease, and our world groans to be made new at Christ’s return. We must struggle with illness, disaster, injury, and even death, and as Neville remarks in the film, God is able to “take a bad situation and make it good. Sometimes that good situation doesn’t always mean the person would be healed.”
God is there in the midst of us, whether or not we experience the supernatural. Sometimes God’s strength, hope, and love can shine out the brightest through brokenness.
CAUTIONS:
Violence, death, and illness are discussed, but nothing objectionable is shown.
Debbie Holloway is the Family Life Editor for Crosswalk.com.
Publication date: November 13, 2013