The Christmas Miracle

The Christmas Miracle

The Christmas Miracle is a heartwarming story of a family's struggle to keep their faith alive during a time of hardship. Set in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee in the late 1800s, the story follows the family of John and Mary Noailles as they face a difficult winter. With no money to buy food or supplies, the family must rely on the kindness of their neighbors and the generosity of strangers. When a mysterious stranger arrives in town, he brings with him a message of hope and a promise of a miracle. With the help of the stranger, the family is able to make it through the winter and find joy in the Christmas season. The Christmas Miracle is a story of faith, hope, and the power of love. It is a reminder that miracles can happen when we least expect them.

By Mary Noailles Murfree · First published 1911 · Genre: Religious Fiction, Christmas Fiction, Romance · 6,509 words

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He yearned for a sign from the heavens. Could one intimation be vouchsafed him, how it would confirm his faltering faith! Jubal Kennedy was of the temperament impervious to spiritual subtleties, fain to reach conclusions with the line and rule of mathematical demonstration. Thus, all unreceptive, he looked through the mountain gap, as through some stupendous gateway, on the splendors of autumn; the vast landscape glamorous in a transparent amethystine haze; the foliage of the dense primeval wilderness in the October richness of red and russet; the "hunter's moon," a full sphere of illuminated pearl, high in the blue east while yet the dull vermilion sun swung westering above the massive purple heights. He knew how the sap was sinking; that the growths of the year had now failed; presently all would be shrouded in snow, but only to rise again in the reassurance of vernal quickening, to glow anew in the fullness of bloom, to attain eventually the perfection of fruition. And still he was deaf to the reiterated analogy of death, and blind to the immanent obvious prophecy of resurrection and the life to come. His thoughts, as he stood on this jutting crag in Sunrise Gap, were with a recent "experience meeting" at which he had sought to canvass his spiritual needs. His demand of a sign from the heavens as evidence of the existence of the God of revelation, as assurance of the awakening of divine grace in the human heart, as actual proof that wistful mortality is inherently endowed with immortality, had electrified this symposium. Though it was fashionable, so to speak, in this remote cove among the Great Smoky Mountains, to be repentant in rhetorical involutions and a self-accuser in finespun interpretations of sin, doubt, or more properly an eager questioning, a desire to possess the sacred mysteries of religion, was unprecedented. Kennedy was a proud man, reticent, reserved. Although the old parson, visibly surprised and startled, had gently invited his full confidence, Kennedy had hastily swallowed his words, as best he might, perceiving that the congregation had wholly misinterpreted their true intent and that certain gossips had an unholy relish of the sensation they had caused.

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The Christmas Miracle is listed on Textopian as a short story by Mary Noailles Murfree, dated 1911 CE.

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Fiction · Mountain life · Short stories · air · aurelia · basil · chair · could · enough · ez · face · fiddle

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