A Treasury of Christmas Miracles by Karen Kingsbury Read Free Book Online Page A

stunned. She remembered the night when she had felt a hand moving gently along her back. “Could it somehow have
     reversed itself?” she asked the doctor, wanting to be absolutely sure about what had happened.
    “No. For a person to have scoliosis as severely as you did in these last X rays”—the doctor held the photographs up to the
     light and shook his head—“you would definitely have had scar tissue, even if it had somehow reversed itself.”
    “Then how do you explain it?”
    The doctor put the films gently on a nearby table and smiled at Ashley. “I’ve learned over the years that there are some things
     we on Earth cannot explain when it comes to medical healings. I like to call them miracles.”
    Ashley shared with the doctor the incident weeks earlier when at Christmastime Bill had been praying and she had felt a hand
     on her spine at the same time that he felt a warmth passing beneath his hand. To Ashley’s surprise, the doctor nodded.
    “Yes, when we hear of this type of thing—and we don’t hear about it very often—there is often a warmth associated with it.
     It doesn’t take a lot of believing on my part. After all, the human body itself is a working miracle. That our Creator would
     continue to work miracles within us is in my opinion quite possible.”
    Months later when Ashley and Bill left for Africa, it was in good health and with a deep respect for the kind of prayer that
     God answers in the form of miraculous healing. And a feeling of intense gratitude for the Lord’s two special Christmas gifts:
     Ashley’s healthy spine, and the ability to go into the mission believing that what the Bible says is true: Nothing is impossible
     with God.

Home for
Christmas
    B arbara Oliver was the only one of her five siblings who never quite fit in. When her four sisters played sports with their
     only brother, she watched on the sidelines. When the girls grew older and began dating, Barbara stayed at home and watched
     television; she felt too shy and unlovely to mix with the boys her age.
    She struggled with her weight and often sat alone at family get-togethers, feeling too self-conscious to participate. And
     so her peers and even her immediate family often forgot about her, finding it easier to involve themselves in their own lives
     than to take time to figure out why Barbara was so quiet.
    During those crucial formative years, Barbara appeared to have few opinions and even fewer social graces, but inside her lived
     a young woman nearly bursting with the desire to be loved and cared for. For that reason, from the time she was old enough
     to walk, she idolized the two men in her life: her brother, Lou, and her father, Hank.
    Hank Oliver was a small-town doctor during the years when his family was growing up in Glenview, Illinois. He was the type
     of practitioner who still made house calls and who allowed his patients to pay him by whatever means they could—even if that
     meant trading a handpicked bag of produce for one of his visits. He had the lowest charges in town, and while most doctors
     would only prescribe medications, he was willing to teach people nutrition and preventative measures for improving their health.
    Everyone in town loved Doctor Hank, as they called him. The feeling was mutual, and he often spent seven days a week engulfed
     in his practice. Just a handful of people in Glenview ever wondered if Doctor Hank loved them in return and they lived under
     his roof.
    “Don’t you ever wonder, Lou?” Barbara asked her brother one day when they were in their early teens. “He’s gone so much of
     the time that I’m not sure whether he really loves us or not.”
    Lou’s eyes fell, and he stared at the baseball and glove in his hands. His father had promised to play ball with him that
     day, but once again he’d been called away for a medical emergency.
    “Yeah,” he said after a while. “I know what you mean. If he loves us, then why can’t he spend more time with