The Mustard Seed

Sara, a ten year-old girl in a small California country town, startles her family when she seems to bring a dead bird back to life. Most of her family scoffs at such childish “imagination.” The exception is her Grandpa Sam, a Green Beret Vietnam veteran whose gruff exterior masks a passionate devotion to his grandchildren. Then Sara inexplicably begins to heal people afflicted with dire conditions. A boy who had been paralyzed for years suddenly walks. A blind girl can now see. A little girl in the final stages of cancer is suddenly free of all symptoms. Despite the attempts of her family and her doctor to shield her from publicity, Sara is thrown into the limelight and becomes an unlikely media celebrity, her story going viral. Ironically, she insists all the while that the work is done not by her but by Jesus — whom she sees walking on the lake near Sam’s ranch. At first, most of her family, like nearly everyone else, assume only mundane causes for these wonders and see coincidences and fantasies rather than miracles. Even Sam begins to think the doctors may be right in ascribing Sara’s visions and works to “natural” causes. Until one central question occurs to him:


Was Sara alone in seeing Jesus?


Sam needs to find the answer. Because in the strangest twist of fate, it turns out Sara’s life may depend on it.


In an ending that is as healing as it is unexpected, Sara’s faith proves to all who care to attend to it to be more powerful and life affirming than the presumed certainties of science and even of death itself.