Last year, I published a post on using miracles in fiction.
After reading this post, one reader asked me an interesting question: what about healing? Can we have a character receive a miraculous healing … like a resurrection?
The short answer is yes, you can have a healing in Christian fiction.
But the longer and more complicated answer is that it has to be written with great care. A resurrection is a big miracle, so you have to follow the guidelines to writing miracles I covered in my previous post—you have to set up a world in which miracles happen, and you have to set the expectation of big life-giving resurrection miracles.
You also have to make sure the resurrection miracle (or its close cousin, the healing from a fatal disease miracle) is right for the story. It could be that sometimes characters go through hard times, pray for healing or resurrection, and don’t get their miracle (just like in real life). For some stories—perhaps many stories—that is the right and best answer.
Let me show you through examples from novels I’ve read. Yes, this post will have spoilers.
Grace in Strange Disguise by Christine Dillon
Grace in Strange Disguise is the story of Rachel, a physiotherapist and pastor’s daughter who has the perfect life … until she’s diagnosed with cancer. Her father and fiance pray for her healing. Rachel prays and fasts. But Rachel learns God isn’t a wizard in the sky, prayer isn’t a magic spell, and healing isn’t a matter of saying or doing the right things.
Instead, Rachel finds the true God of the Bible. Rachel also finds He has a purpose in taking her through the hard places of cancer. No, God doesn’t work the way Rachel or her father thought He should. But the result of doing things God’s way is far better.
Having Rachel healed through prayer would have been wrong, as that would have deprived Rachel (and the reader) of the opportunity to know God better. After all, we often learn more about God in the dark places than in the light.
Dana’s Valley by Janette Oke and Laurel Oke Logan
Dana’s Valley is a young adult novel narrated by a teenager (Dana) whose sister is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. Dana and her family consistently pray for the sister’s healing but she does die. Dana is distraught and her faith is shaken: she’d asked God for a miracle, and he didn’t deliver.
Her mother says :
“Only God could have carried me through in the way that I needed in order to minister to Dana. I could never have managed it on my own. Never. … Only God could have helped us manage [finances] so well. … How much more could God have done for us? I’ve seen His hands holding us up every step of the way.”
Despite their prayers, Dana is dying. Her mother has an eternal view of Dana’s future that’s rarely seen in real life or in fiction:
“We don’t waste our prayers on salavaging life here—we’re asking for God to call to the life that’s eternal. And that’s what God has given to Dana. Life that won’t end. She’s almost made it through all the pain and arrived at the beginning. God has answered every prayer.”
This is a reminder that miracles don’t always look like we think they should. That God doesn’t always answer prayer in the way we expect Him to. But that’s nothing new: Jesus was the Messiah, but he wasn’t the answer they were looking for.
As Sure as the Dawn by Francine Rivers
As Sure as the Dawn is the final novel in The Mark of the Lion trilogy. The trilogy begins with a miracle: Jesus heals the son of the widow from Naim. Hadassah, the main character in the first two novels in the trilogy, is the daughter of the boy Jesus raised from the dead.
Rivers therefore sets up a world in which miracles happen. Big miracles. Resurrection miracles. The first two books are filled with miracles, including miracles of healing where Hadassah prays for a person, and that person is healed.
The third book has other miracles, including speaking in tongues, and a character who rises from the dead. But it works, because the story has already had two resurrection miracles (the widow’s son, and Jesus himself), as well as a host of “lesser” miracles.
To answer the original question:
Yes, you can have resurrection miracles—in real life and in fiction. But fictional resurrection miracles have to follow the same “rules” as other miracles. They have to be set up properly. And they have to serve the story.
Sometimes the right answer is that the character doesn’t get their miracle.
Why?
Because that’s how life works.
God, in his infinite wisdom, doesn’t always give us the answer we want. Sometimes He takes a long time to deliver the answer—whether it’s the answer we want or the answer we don’t want.
It’s a time of waiting, of patience, of testing our faith.
So we need for our characters to have to wait, to develop patience, to have their fictional faith tested. Because that’s one of the reasons people read fiction (consciously or subconsciously): to find out how other people cope with problems. That means seeing characters work through their problems, rather than having the author-as-God fix their problems in some fabricated deus ex machina resolution.
But if you’ve set your resurrection miracle up (that means you’ve foreshadowed it, not telegraphed it), and the resurrection is the best possible alternative for your story, then use it. Because there are times we need reminding that God is a God of miracles, small and big.
