God's Not Dead 2 (26 page)

THE COMMENT
she hears after the stunning
 
—
staggering
 
—meltdown that just happened in court gives Amy an idea. One of the reporters shares a thought. A simple cliché.

“She hasn’t got a prayer.”

Amy thinks about it for a moment and disagrees. She has more than a single prayer. She has multiple prayers.

And sometimes prayer is just enough.

Amy bypasses the thick crowd outside that appears to have doubled even from this morning. More signs and chants and reporters and camera crews. She thinks of what a mess all of this has become. And over what? Over someone mentioning the name of Jesus in the classroom.

She walks over to the park across the street and finds a bench.
Her phone has 70 percent of its battery left. That’s good. She’s going to need it.

The first thing she sees is an e-mail from her friend Mina. She spoke to her just yesterday, telling her the latest about the case and asking her to pray. The subject for the e-mail is “Some Encouragement.”

Amy begins to read the note.

Hi, Amy. I’m thinking and praying for you this morning. I have tucked away some Bible verses that have helped me through this past year, so I thought I’d share them with you. I hope they’re comforting. Please let me know what happens today. Love you
 
—Mina

Below Mina’s words are several passages of Scripture. Amy carefully reads each.

“Lord, help!” they cried in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He calmed the storm to a whisper and stilled the waves. What a blessing was that stillness as he brought them safely into harbor! (Psalm 107:28-30)

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)

As we pray to our God and Father about you, we
think of your faithful work, your loving deeds, and the enduring hope you have because of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thessalonians 1:3)

“I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.” (Mark 11:24)

Each verse applies to Amy and to Grace and to the trial and to this very moment.

God calming a storm with a whisper.

So cry out to him.

Peace can come right now if you pray and thank God for everything.

So tell God what you need.

Faithful work and loving deeds and hope in Christ are blessed.

So pray for Grace, who has shown all of these things.

Prayers will be answered if we just believe.

So pray.

Amy closes her eyes and does exactly that. Suddenly she’s no longer on this bench near a fountain on a beautiful April day. She’s back in the courtroom; and she’s next to Grace, wherever she might be; and she’s with the jurors in their room, deliberating; and she’s with Tom and Brooke and Brooke’s parents.

She prays for all of them and asks God to shine down on them. She asks for his will to be done and for his name to be glorified.

When she opens her eyes, she begins to reach out to others. Mina is the first one she texts.

Thank you for the e-mail!! What a blessing. I need
 
—we need
 
—prayer right now. Pray for Grace and the case.

Amy then begins to text others. Everyone she can think of who
might pray. Even a handful of those who probably won’t but might be curious or inspired to see what this is all about. She calls and leaves a message for Reverend Jude at the church to pray. Another, and another.

Then she remembers when a group surrounded her at the most unlikely of times and stopped what they were doing to pray. Not just any group but a musical group. A band that prayed for her.

“Lord, let Amy know that you give her the strength to deal with the trials she’s facing . . . and that you’ll be with her every step of the way.”

Prayers don’t have an expiration date or a shelf life. They’re not chronological or visible or quantifiable. But they are real, and they’re always heard.

Perhaps the prayers from last year are still flying above, helping her to look up. Even if
 
—or when
 
—they fly away like birds for the winter, it’s nice to know they still remain alive and active. Maybe even in ways she could never dream about.

So Amy texts Michael Tait, the Newsboys singer, asking him for prayer. For much-needed prayer. She starts to simply sum up what’s happened, but it ends up being several paragraphs worth of sharing Grace’s story.

I am one who still remembers the prayers you guys offered up for me one night. They not only mean something to me, but they were heard. I believe God heard them and responded. So I’m asking that you guys lift up Grace if you can. Wherever you might be. Thanks!!

Amy finally shuts off her phone’s screen, closes her eyes again, and asks God to move in the next few hours. Then she decides to move herself after hearing her stomach rumble and realizing she never had breakfast.

A couple of hours later, Amy gets a text while working in Evelyn’s Espresso. She’s been here ever since grabbing a sandwich and an iced coffee.

The text is from Brooke, who told her she’d alert her to anything happening at the courthouse.

It looks like they’ve reached a verdict.

Amy bolts up from her chair and puts her laptop in her bag. Before leaving she sends Brooke a quick text.

I’ll be there in ten minutes.

It should only take about five minutes to walk back to the courthouse, but with all the people she’ll have to navigate around, it might take longer to locate the teenager.

With her heels tapping as fast as her fingers can type, Amy feels the buzzing of her phone in her hand.

It’s Michael Tait.

“Amy?” his voice shouts out.

“Yes!”

It sounds like he’s in a wind tunnel or maybe hanging on the side of an airplane.

Mission: Impossible 10, starring the Newsboys.

“Good
 
—I have you. Hold on
 
—I want you to hear something.”

“Where are you?” she asks.

“It’s eight o’clock over here. We’re in Ireland. At a show.”

The crackling sound of a crowd can be heard in the background. Amy continues to walk and tries her best to hear what’s going on.

Michael begins to talk again.

He must literally be standing on stage right now.

“My friends, right now I’ve got a friend named Amy on the line . . . and she’s in America, where there’s a woman on trial for her
faith. A woman who’s risked everything for the love of Jesus. Lord, we know that to lose anything for you is an honor with an eternal reward. But if it’s within your will, can you restore this woman’s hope and make her faith an example to others?”

The voice of the singer is all Amy can hear now. It seems like the applause and the cheers have been silenced.

“Lord, show your power to a fallen world. We know that you have the power to do anything. And so we ask you, crying out as the body of Christ, ‘Let it be on earth as it is in heaven.’ Move the hearts of those people
 
—that judge and jury
 
—to let them know the beauty of your majesty. Let us all pray like your Son prayed. . . . Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

Soon the crowd joins in. The muffled, loud, cutting-in-and-out sound of the Lord’s Prayer fills her phone.

“Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Amy is now sitting on a stone wall, listening and wiping the tears away from her eyes. She mouths the words of the prayer with them.

They are real, and they’re always heard.

And right now thousands of voices are praying them in unison.

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever.”

Then Michael ends with a shout of
“Amen!”
The crowd erupts again and music begins to play.

Amy wipes her eyes and resumes walking, listening to the music. The call finally ends, probably because the singer needs to go ahead and perform.

She doesn’t need to hear the lyrics of the song. She already knows them by heart and can hear them playing in her head.

“It’s the smallest spark that can light the dark.”

Songs can be prayers, like stories and photographs and films and paintings.

And even blogs.

Soon she sees the courthouse and walks toward it.

“Please, Lord, light the dark.”

THIS WOULD BE
a perfect time for my dad to show up again out of the blue. It’d be an ideal kick-’em-when-they’re-down sort of moment. But he’s nowhere to be found. I’m tempted to go all Paul Newman in
The Verdict
and find a bar to pound a few back before the jury reconvenes. Yet I just stay in my car, the door open, the parking lot mostly empty. I’m a few blocks down from the courthouse.

I feel a bit like you do after having a big blowup with someone and then going away and rehashing the words you just said. I knew what I was going to say this morning, but maybe I went on a little too much. Perhaps I should’ve walked the fine line and then let it go. But I dove in deep.

I’m not sure what to think now.

If I didn’t know smoking was such an awful, life-threatening habit, this would be the perfect moment to just sit and stare into space and smoke a Marlboro. To be the Marlboro man, deep in thought, smoking.

Yeah, great motivation there, Tommy Boy.

I turn on the radio. Taylor Swift is telling me to shake it off. I change the station right away. The Beatles are suddenly telling me to carry that weight a long time. I switch again. Bono is reminding me he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. I try one more time. Oh, good, it’s Céline Dion.

Yeah, sure, my heart might go on, but my career ain’t going nowhere.

I turn off the radio just as I get a phone call.

It’s verdict time.

Sitting at the defense table, I’m feeling like the school outcast. I’ve gotten a couple of nasty looks from the judge, a few haughty glances from Kane and his team, all while Grace sits beside me silent and looking the other way. I’ve only said hello to her. I figure I’ve already pushed my luck with her. At least on this day.

When the jurors file back in, I can’t get a sense of what they’re thinking or feeling. That’s typical, but I usually pick up some kind of vibe. I’m getting nothing.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a decision?” the judge asks.

“We have, Your Honor,” the jury foreman, a woman named Doris, says.

“How do you find?”

I hold my breath and pause my life for a moment.

“We, the jury, find in favor of Grace Wesley.”

An uproar sounds behind us as Grace closes her eyes and brings her clasped hands up to her face. This moment is one I’ve hoped for, yet now it looks and feels nothing like I envisioned.

There’s sudden motion as Brooke and several others rush to us and give us hugs. I gather my briefcase and smile. Grace is innocent and I’m being held in contempt by both the judge and the defendant.

“You’ve kept quiet for so long,” I hear Grace telling Brooke. “Why don’t you go out and share the good news?”

The young woman beams and heads back toward the doors and out to the courthouse steps. Others are talking to Grace now, congratulating her. Her eyes glance over at me. They’re no longer hostile.

She gets what I did.

As I wait on Grace, I see Kane whispering something to his teammates. He looks like he’s scolding them. As he turns and buttons up his suit coat, I actually can’t help my grin. I seriously can’t. I know I’m gloating.

I doubt the older man will give me any ounce of credit. His team collects their ten thousand pages of notes and then prepares to follow him out of the courthouse.

“Hey, Kane?” I ask as he passes.

He pauses for a moment to look back.

“I like your shoes,” I say.

The statement, just like my entire existence, is completely beneath him. Kane turns and walks down the aisle.

It’s nice to see him leaving for good. Guys like him are part of the reason I wanted to become a lawyer. Because I guess I hate them. In some ways
 
—in many ways
 
—I never wanted to become one of them. Until I realized I was heading in that direction.

Maybe the whole fall from grace was a good thing.

I feel a hand tugging my shoulder.

Speaking of Grace . . .

“I’m sorry,” she says after I turn to face her.

I shake my head. “No, it’s okay. I deserved it.”

It’s nice to see her smile. And the relief that’s washed all over her.

“It’s just
 
—I didn’t realize what you were doing.”

“Yeah, I know,” I say. “I couldn’t tell you. It had to come as a surprise or your reactions wouldn’t have moved the jury.”

“So you had a plan after all.”

“No, you did. You stood up for what you believe. And you stayed faithful. I don’t know anyone else who would have done that. They were hoping to make an example of you, but instead, you’ve become an inspiration for others. Including me.”

“Thank you,” Grace says. “For everything.”

She gives me a hug. Like everything else about her, it just feels right.

SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
Brooke shouting to the crowd that Grace won and the group of people suddenly celebrating and scattering at the same time and then Grace and Tom stepping out to greet everybody is when it hits Amy. It’s not unusual for her to have moments like this
 
—they’ve happened to her all her life. Times when she’s at a family function or a business meeting or a classroom or a party and she suddenly has a kind of out-of-body experience and finds herself looking over everybody. She feels it’s the artist in her, the part of her that’s always watching and wondering and searching for meaning.

Meaning is here in three bold words.

The irony is that they’re not the three words everybody is chanting all around her like football fans at a playoff game.

“God’s Not Dead!”

Amy finds herself thinking of the witness named James Wallace, whom Tom called to testify. The former homicide detective, an atheist who eventually came to faith by applying logical methods to the Scriptures. She recalls his testimony about the connections in the Gospels.

“That’s an example of interconnectedness on a surface level. But there are others that go much deeper.”

She wrote that quote down and started to think about it for a future blog. Now, alongside the smiles and the celebration and the singing, Amy begins to write that blog in her head. She knows what three words she will highlight. And they’re not
God’s Not Dead
. Though maybe she’ll start there.

God’s Not Dead.

That’s right, of course. He’s not. But that’s only half the story.

Four passages of Scripture highlighting a woman named Mary Magdalene all connect in a very cool way.

Of all the people in the world to announce his resurrection to, Jesus chose Mary Magdalene. A woman he cast demons from. Not exactly the shining beacon of lifelong faith.

But that’s the point, right?

That’s
absolutely
the point.

The Gospels all tell the same story.

In Matthew 28:6
 
—“‘He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead, just as he said would happen. Come, see where his body was lying.’”

Mark 16:11
 
—“But when she told them that Jesus was alive and she had seen him, they didn’t believe her.”

Luke 24:6
 
—“‘He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Remember what he told you back in Galilee.’”

John 20:17
 
—“‘Don’t cling to me,’ Jesus said, ‘for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”’”

The other half of the story, the half that makes us whole?

He is risen.

Jesus is alive.

He is risen.

“I am ascending.”

Risen, alive, and ascending.

Amy feels wrapped up and shaken and moved. So many thoughts inside.
God’s Not Dead.
Which she finally came to grips with a year ago.
Do you believe?
A question she’s been asked repeatedly for the last few months.

She knows something now. Not because of the crowd or because of the verdict but because of seeing the undeniable faith played out in others’ lives the last couple of weeks.

The three words that define the meaning of all this?

He’s surely alive.