From Two Hundred Instances of Divine Healing
Healing of Willie and Forrest
In the year 1906, our little Willie, then two-and-a-half years old, had a long, sharpened, lead pencil in his hand, and in running across the floor, fell, and ran the sharpened end of the pencil just between his right eyeball and the frontal bone—in fact, it ran up into the frontal bone and broke off. His mother hastened to him as he started to rise, but the piece had come so near to the brain that he fell, apparently lifeless, into her arms. She carried him into the dining room, where I met her and took him. We saw only a small wound above his eye, which was closed so nicely that it looked as if it might be only a pin-scratch. We found the broken pencil near where he fell, and eagerly, though vainly, we searched the room for the piece broken off, which was no small thing to be in one’s eye.
Before this he had revived, and I suggested that we pray before doing anything else. God has promised to be a present help in time of need, and we believed His word. After prayer, we considered having a physician remove the pieces, but, knowing the injury to be so very near to the brain, we feared lest the probing might prove fatal. We called Brother S. P. McCully, who came and prayed with us, and said he felt a real assurance that God would make it all right without the aid of a physician. We then felt very much encouraged and decided to trust it all with God.
In two days his eye was swollen tight shut, and it remained so for nearly a week, when he ran against the corner of the kitchen cabinet and broke the injured place open. But it was well festered and ready to come open, and tiny splinters and specks of lead came out with the corruption. We used every precaution by sanitation to prevent blood-poisoning. The enemy whispered that the muscle was severed which holds the eyelid up, and that the lid would now always droop. We did not believe it, for we trusted in God with all our hearts, and He assured us that He would perform that which He had spoken. The wound kept running, and larger splinters and pieces of lead came out. In about two weeks it got well and healed up nicely, but, lo! the lid drooped. We were not dismayed, but kept our faith in God and reminded Him of His promise. Soon the place swelled and festered again; and when it opened, a piece of wood larger than a grain of wheat came out and later two pieces of lead, one of which was more than an eighth of an inch in length. Then it healed nicely, leaving the lid exactly like the other and leaving only a very small scar. Does it pay to trust in God? We decided with all our hearts that it does.
Again, in the spring of the year 1907, our little Forrest, then one year old, in learning to walk, fell many times. There was a certain kind of grass (peculiar to that part of the State—Eureka, Kansas) growing in our yard. One of the little bearded heads ran up the baby’s right nostril, or he might have put it there. We didn’t know it, and the beards were pointing downward, which hindered them from working out. Soon it caused a sore to come in his nose, and for months the odor was so very offensive that we could not enjoy our baby boy very much. In the fall of that same year we saw Brother S. G. Bryant and asked him what he thought was wrong. He said that, as near as he was able to judge, it was chronic catarrh. We were much troubled about the affliction, as we could scarcely bear to sleep near the child on account of the offensive odor.
One afternoon, in December of that year, as Wife was rocking him to sleep, the thought came forcibly to her mind (as if whispered by the angels of heaven, she said), “Jesus is able to heal him.” Her heart was melted before the Lord as she thought of His tender mercy. In tears of gratitude she offered a simple little prayer of faith, not including more than a dozen words, and as she walked to the bed with the sleeping child, she said, “Lord, I believe Thou wilt do this for Thy glory.” She never thought of it again until Forrest awoke, and, as he went running across the room, she noticed some small object protruding from his right nostril. In removing it she found it to be a head of the grass from our yard. In less than two days the bad odor was gone, and that was the last trace of the affliction.
Dear reader, it pays to trust in God.