Acts of Kindness and a Miracle or Two

Acts of kindness and miracles take place all around us. Take the time to observe and believe.

Reposting of Fox News Article – December 8, 2013

Sisters Hoping for New Mom and Dad Use Prayer Balloon to Get Their Wish

Two Tennessee sisters saw their dreams come true after releasing a written wish to be adopted inside a “prayer balloon” that floated hundreds of miles to Maryland – but was then mailed back to their foster parents upon landing.

“I can just see God taking this balloon and blowing it in the right direction. To be found and be sent back to us to tell us he approves for us to be able to adopt these girls,” the foster mother – identified only as Lynn – who was caring for the sisters with her husband Dennis, told WBIR-TV.

Sisters Eva, 7, and Jasmine, 8 – their last names have not been published – reportedly wrote their dreams for adoption on an index card and placed it in a plastic bag, and then inside a balloon. Some thirty other children also attending Vacation Bible School in Knoxville Tennessee over the summer did the same with their own prayers and wishes.

“We want to be adopted by our new mommy and daddy on Christmas,” read the note, which an adult reportedly helped the girls write on an index card. At the time, the youngsters had only lived with Lynn and Dennis for two months, although the four had known each other for about a year earlier while a family friend of Lynn and Dennis had cared for the girls before them.

“We took all of the prayer requests and we sealed them in a little Ziploc bag, “Lynn told WBIR. “We took them outside and released these balloons; there was thirty of them. The girls’ balloon is the only one to this day that has come back to us.”

The balloon reportedly landed more than 400 miles away in an RV park in McHenry, Md, and the as-yet-unidentified people who found it soon mailed the note back to Lynn and Dennis, who quickly set about adopting the girls before the holiday.

On Tuesday, a Tennessee judge made the adoption official – making the sisters’ Christmas dreams a reality.

“I love you,” Eva reportedly said during the court proceeding as she hugged her new parents.

“It just felt like the right thing to do,” Dennis told WBIR-TV, “it’s what I wanted to do . All of our children totally are grown, in their 30s. It was an answered prayer.

Here’s what I think; miracles take place all around us. We just need to slow down and open our eyes to see them.

“Never under estimate the power of prayer! Constant prayer, with full conviction, without loss of hope, really does create miracles.

The 1924 Christmas Truce

‘All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914,’ illustration by Scott McKowen (Courtesy) – Copied from an article about a San Diego opera, “All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce 1914” by Lonnie Burstein Hewitt

On December 19, 2014, the Wall Street Journal published the following story, The Spirit of the 1914 Christmas Truce, by Robert M. Sapolsky.

“On Christmas morning we stuck up a board with ‘A Merry Christmas’ on it. The enemy had stuck up a similar one… Two of our men then threw their equipment off and jumped on the parapet with their hands above their heads. Two of the Germans done the same and commenced to walk up the river bank, our two men going to meet them. They met and shook hands and then we all got out of the trench…

So wrote a British soldier named Frank Richards, referring to the first Christmas of World War I, one hundred years ago… Up and down the four hundred-odd miles of trenches on the Western Front, men risked their lives with similar acts, meeting opposing soldiers in “no man’s land.” Wary and unarmed, they made their way out of their trenches, taking steps that a day earlier, would have guaranteed their death at the hands of sharpshooters and machine gunners a hundred yards away.

The relaxation of hostilities spread, and what has come to be called the “Christmas truce” took hold. Soon, soldiers were holding joint burial services for the dead. They began trading goods. British soldiers had been given holiday tins of plum pudding from the king; German soldiers had received pipes with a picture of the crown prince on them, and before long the men were bartering these holiday gee-gaws that celebrated the enemy’s royals. Eventually, soldiers prayed and caroled together, shared dinner, exchanged gifts. Most famously, there were soccer matches at various locations, played with improvised balls.

The truce mostly held through Christmas and, in some cases even to the New Year. It took senior officers’ threats for fighting to resume, and such comprehensive battlefront peacemaking never happened again during the Great War. Courts-martial were brought against those involved later in even brief Christmas truces to retrieve the dead…”

I copied this article to share during a class I was teaching a number of years ago. I kept it so I could remember that even in the worst of times, miracles will unfold. These men or boys were moved and needed a miracle. One soldier started to speak and it sparked others to take a chance and do the same. For those that participated in this truce, they were touched forever. They wanted to believe in humanity and God opened a door.

I believe miracles abound and strange things happen everyday whether in war or crisis or peace. I have to keep believing this for my children and for the future children that are being born today. I hope you believe the same.

Happy for feedback