The Power of Prayer

Grace Byrne, a  young runner from Athens Georgia, was stuck by a car during a training session.  A friend, Drew Haro,  decides to dedicate his run in a marathon in her honor so:

"On an unseasonably cool morning in Baton Rouge, Haro ran a personal-best time of 2 hours, 34 minutes and 2 seconds. It was just 20 seconds off the race record.
“Winning the race was a great metaphor for the race that Grace is in,” Haro said in a telephone interview from the Catholic Center. “My win can be symbolic of her winning the race of recovery that she is in.”

It didn’t take long for word to get back to Athens. Haro called Chris Byrne, Grace’s father, at the hospital that Sunday afternoon.  “Chris asked me what time I finished the race,” Haro said. “I told him it was about 10:30 that morning their time. He said, ‘Drew, I don’t know if you knew this, but earlier this weekend things were looking pretty bad."

So bad that the Byrne family was being prepared for the worst. Family was called in, as was Father Tom Vigliotta, a priest at the UGA Catholic Center. He was asked to deliver the sacrament of the sick.

“Say what you want about it,” Chris Byrne told Haro, “but shortly after you finished your race, the doctor came back and said ‘man, things have turned.’ Whether you offer that to prayer and people coming together or to one of those really nice coincidences, it’s a small miracle.”

 Read the entire story here:

Athens marathoner Drew Haro runs with Grace