Sophia: Here’s a wild thought. Back in 1944, a Gallup poll found that nearly one hundred percent of Americans believed in God. Fast forward to today, and that number has dropped to around eighty percent. And what’s even more telling is that only four in ten now believe God actually intervenes in their lives. Daniel: And yet, in 2019, two teenagers are drowning in the Atlantic, miles from shore. They pray, "God, please send something to save us." At that exact moment, the crew of a yacht hears a faint scream over the wind and waves. They turn around, and pull the kids from the water. The name of the yacht? The 'Amen'. Sophia: Whoa. That gives me chills. That’s the kind of story that makes you question the statistics. Daniel: It’s precisely the kind of question at the heart of Faith Still Moves Mountains by Harris Faulkner. And Faulkner is such an interesting messenger for this. She's a six-time Emmy-winning journalist, a military brat raised on discipline and facts. Her job is to report what can be verified. Sophia: Right, she’s not a theologian or a pastor. She’s a hard-news anchor. Daniel: Exactly. Yet she's compiled this collection of stories that defy simple, factual explanation. The book was an instant number one bestseller, which tells you it’s tapping into a deep-seated need for hope, for something beyond what we can see and measure. Sophia: Okay, that boat story is wild. But let's start with something even more visceral. What happens when the chaos isn't a vast ocean, but it's literally tearing your house apart around you?

Daniel: That’s the perfect place to start, because it gets right to the core of faith as a shield. Faulkner tells the story of Earnestine Reese, a 72-year-old grandmother in Beauregard, Alabama. In March 2019, a monster F4 tornado, part of a massive outbreak, is heading straight for her town. Sophia: I’ve seen the videos of those storms. They are absolutely terrifying. Pure, destructive chaos. Daniel: Utter chaos. Earnestine, her daughter LaShawn, and her family all huddle together in what they think is the safest part of the house: the bathroom. They hear the classic freight train sound, and then the world just explodes. LaShawn describes hearing nails being ripped out of the wood, bricks tumbling, glass shattering. The pressure is immense. When it’s over, they crawl out into the daylight, and the house is gone. It's just a pile of rubble. Sophia: Unbelievable that they survived at all. Daniel: But here’s the detail that made the story go viral. Amidst the total devastation, one small section of the house is still standing, completely intact. It’s a small closet where Earnestine goes every morning to pray. Her prayer closet. Sophia: Come on. That’s an incredible image. But a cynic would immediately say the closet was just the most structurally sound part of the house, maybe it was reinforced or in a protected corner. What makes this a story of faith and not just a fluke of physics? Daniel: That’s the exact question to ask. And Faulkner’s point, which is really Earnestine’s point, is that the miracle isn't just about the physics of the closet. It’s about the human response to it. The first thing Earnestine does, sitting on the rubble of her home, is get on a video call with her grandson and say, "Tell God thank you! Hey! So glad. Nothing but the power of God." Sophia: Wow. Not "we lost everything," but "thank you." Daniel: Exactly. Her first instinct wasn't despair, but gratitude. The physical closet becomes a symbol, a tangible focal point for the entire community's faith. It’s a physical manifestation of order in the middle of absolute, random chaos. It gave them a story to hold onto while they rebuilt. Sophia: So the miracle isn't just the object that survived, it's the meaning people gave it. It’s about finding a 'why' inside the 'what'. That connects back to the story of the teens at sea, doesn't it? The boat named 'Amen'. Daniel: It’s the same pattern. The two teens, Heather and Tyler, were high school seniors who decided to skip school and go for a swim. They were strong athletes, but they misjudged the current in the St. Augustine Inlet and were swept out to sea. They fought for nearly two hours, getting weaker and weaker, until they were just two specks in the open ocean. Sophia: A terrifyingly helpless situation. Daniel: Completely. They finally gave up trying to swim, linked arms, and Tyler prayed, "If you’re out there, please send something to save us." Meanwhile, the owner of the 'Amen', Eric Wagner, was on a miserable trip up the coast. Bad weather and delays had forced him to take a route much closer to shore than he'd planned. His crew heard a scream, turned the boat around, and found them. Sophia: The timing is just staggering. Daniel: And Eric Wagner himself said, "I believe it was miraculous. There were too many coincidences, in my opinion, for this to be a coincidence." Heather, after being pulled onto the boat, looked him in the eye and said, "God is real." For them, and for the crew of the 'Amen', it wasn't just a lucky break. It was an answer. Faulkner uses these stories to show faith acting as a shield, not just from physical harm, but from the despair that comes with it. Sophia: It’s a shield against hopelessness. That makes sense. Okay, so faith can be a shield against external chaos. But what about the chaos inside? The book gets into some really dark personal struggles, like depression and addiction. That feels like a completely different kind of mountain to move.

Daniel: It is a different kind of mountain, and maybe a more common one. This is where Faulkner shows faith not just as a shield, but as a catalyst for transformation. One of the most intense stories in the book is about a woman from Wisconsin named Tina Zahn. Sophia: I remember her story. It’s incredibly raw. Daniel: It is. Tina had a successful career and a loving family, but she was privately battling severe postpartum depression, on top of a lifetime of trauma. She said, "You can be an extrovert. That doesn’t mean you don’t feel lonely." She felt trapped in a dark hole. One day, an insensitive comment from a relative was the final trigger. Sophia: What happened? Daniel: She just snapped. She grabbed her car keys, ran out of the house, and drove at high speed toward the Leo Frigo Memorial Bridge in Green Bay, intending to jump. Her mother called her husband, who called 911. A state trooper named Les Boldt heard the call and intercepted her right as she got to the bridge. She scrambled out of her car, climbed over the barrier, and jumped. Sophia: Oh my god. Daniel: But as she fell, Trooper Boldt lunged and managed to grab her wrist. He held on, dangling her over the edge, until other officers arrived and they were ableto pull her back to safety. It was a split-second rescue. Sophia: That's horrifying. And her recovery wasn't instant, right? I mean, a miracle rescue is one thing, but the depression that drove her there doesn't just vanish. She had electroconvulsive therapy, memory loss. Where does faith fit into that messy, clinical reality? Daniel: That is the crucial point. Faulkner is very clear that faith isn't presented as a magic wand that erases the problem. The rescue was the intervention, but the healing was a process. For Tina, faith became the community she found after the attempt. She had earlier found a home at Green Bay Community Church, a place where she felt she belonged for the first time. It was that community that embraced her, without judgment, during her long recovery. Sophia: So the faith part was the safety net that caught her after the physical rescue. Daniel: Precisely. It was the framework that allowed her to reframe her trauma. She quotes the Bible, saying that what others intended for harm, God intended for good. Her deepest pain became her platform. Today, she's an author and a powerful advocate for mental health awareness, sharing her story to give others hope. Sophia: So it's not about preventing the fall, but about what you build from the wreckage. It's a catalyst for a new purpose. That's a powerful idea, especially for anyone who feels defined by their past mistakes or their darkest moments. Daniel: It’s the central idea of this section of the book. The same pattern appears in the story of DeEtte, a woman who overcame a seventeen-year heroin addiction, prostitution, and prison. Her turning point came after the tragic death of her young niece. At the viewing, she saw people from her old life who were now clean, filled with a peace she couldn't comprehend. They told her it was Jesus. She said, "I saw the love of Jesus in those people... And it was that love that brought me to God." She checked into a faith-based rehab, and her journey of healing began. Her past became her qualification to minister to other addicts in Spain. Sophia: Her weakness became her strength. Daniel: Exactly. Her past wasn't erased; it was repurposed.

Daniel: And this idea of faith having a purpose extends beyond the individual. Faulkner makes a bold move in the book and suggests it can operate on a historical scale. Sophia: This is where it gets really provocative. Moving from personal stories to, say, a world war. Daniel: Right. She tells the story of General George S. Patton during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. The Allied advance had stalled. They were bogged down by relentless rain, fog, and mud. Patton's Third Army couldn't move effectively. Sophia: And he was not a man who liked to be stalled. Daniel: Not at all. So he calls in his head chaplain, a man named James O'Neill, and says to him, "Chaplain, I want you to publish a prayer for good weather. We must do something about those rains if we are to win the war." Sophia: Hold on. A general ordering a prayer as a military strategy? That's wild. Was he a deeply religious man, or was this just a desperate morale boost for the troops? Daniel: Faulkner presents him as being intensely pragmatic about it. He wasn't a theologian, but he was a believer in a higher power. He explained his philosophy to the chaplain. He said, "There are three ways that men get what they want: by planning, by working, and by praying." He saw planning and working as essential, but he said between the plan and the operation, there is always an "unknown" factor. And that's where prayer comes in. Sophia: So he saw prayer as a tool, a way to influence the variables he couldn't control. Daniel: A spiritual force multiplier. He had the chaplain compose a prayer on a small card, and he ordered 250,000 copies printed and distributed to every single man in the Third Army. Just as they were being distributed, the Germans launched their massive surprise offensive, the Battle of the Bulge, using the terrible weather as cover. The situation became critical. Sophia: And what happened? Daniel: The weather remained awful for days. But on Christmas morning, the fog and clouds miraculously broke. The sun came out. The ground froze solid. The Allied air forces were finally able to fly, providing crucial support, and Patton's army was able to advance and relieve the besieged forces at Bastogne. It was a major turning point in the battle. Afterward, Patton awarded the chaplain a Bronze Star and said, "Well, Padre, our prayers worked. I knew they would." Sophia: This is where it gets tricky, though. It's one thing to believe in a personal miracle, like the prayer closet. It's another thing entirely to suggest prayer changed the weather and the course of World War II. That's a huge claim. Daniel: It is a huge claim. And the book doesn't shy away from it. It’s presenting these stories as evidence for a bigger possibility—that collective faith, focused and intentional, can have an impact on a massive scale. It challenges us, as modern, rational people, to consider that history might have a spiritual dimension that our textbooks and news reports often ignore.

Sophia: So, when you put it all together—the grandmother in the tornado, the woman on the bridge, the general's prayer for sunshine—what's the single thread connecting them all? What's the core message here? Daniel: I think it's that faith, in Harris Faulkner's view, is fundamentally an action. It’s not passive hope or wishful thinking. It's an active verb. It’s the grandmother praising God in the rubble. It's the teens crying out for help in the middle of the ocean. It’s Tina finding a new church community to support her recovery. It's General Patton issuing a military order for prayer. Sophia: It’s a choice to do something. Daniel: It's a choice to engage with a power beyond yourself, especially when you have no other options left. The book makes a compelling case that in our modern, data-driven world, we've tried to explain everything away. We've forgotten how to account for this 'unknown factor' that Patton talked about. Sophia: The X-factor. Daniel: The X-factor. And Faulkner's argument, through these incredibly powerful stories, is that this factor has been shaping human events all along, whether we choose to see it or not. The book is an invitation to look for it. Sophia: It really leaves you with a big question, doesn't it? In your own life, what do you attribute to coincidence, and what might be something more? It's a fascinating lens to look through. Daniel: It really is. And it makes you wonder. We'd love to hear your thoughts. What's a moment in your life that felt like more than just luck? Find us on our socials and share your story. We're always curious to hear how these ideas resonate. Sophia: This is Aibrary, signing off.