drawings, then paintings, her mother knew she couldn’t have heard these
things from another person. Slowly, her mom began to accept that
Akiane’s visions were real and that therefore, God must be real.
“I think that God knows where he puts our children, in each family,” Mrs.
Kramarik said.
I remembered what Jesus told his disciples one day when they were
trying to keep some kids from “bothering” him: “Let the little children come
to me.”^3
I made a mental note for future sermons: Akiane’s story showed that
God can reach anyone, anywhere, at any age— even a preschool girl in a
home where his name had never been spoken.
But that was not the lesson God had for me that day.
As I watched a montage of Akiane’s artwork play across my computer
screen, the narrator said, “Akiane describes God as vividly as she paints
him.”
At that point, a close-up portrait of the face of Christ filled the screen. It
was the same likeness I’d seen before, but this time with Jesus looking
directly “into the camera,” so to speak.
“He’s pure,” Akiane was saying. “He’s very masculine, really strong and
big. And his eyes are just beautiful.”
Wow. Nearly three years had passed since Colton’s surgery, and about
two and a half years since he first described Jesus to me that night in the
basement. I was struck by the similarities between his and Akiane’s
recollections: all the colors in heaven... and especially their descriptions
of Jesus’ eyes.
“And his eyes,” Colton had said. “Oh, Dad, his eyes are so pretty!”
What an interesting detail for two four-year-olds to key in on. After the
CNN report concluded, I rewound it to that second portrait of Jesus, a
startlingly realistic picture that Akiane painted when she was eight. The
eyes were indeed striking—a clear, greenish blue under bold, dark brows
— with half the face in shadow. And I noticed that his hair was shorter than
most artists paint it. The beard was also different, fuller somehow, more...
I don’t know... casual.
Still, of the literally dozens of portraits of Jesus we’d seen since 2003,