Boy Says Black Panther Taught Him What to Do When He Fell on a Meat Skewer, But Jesus Saved His Life
If it hadn’t been forBlack Panther — a film that won three Oscars Sunday night — an 11-year-old boy might not be alive.
Xavier Cunningham of Missouri and a couple of friends were playing in a treehouse last September. The boys didn’t know it was infested with yellow jackets. When the yellow jackets attacked Xavier, he tripped and fell 4 feet face-first into a meat skewer.
His mom took him to the emergency room. Doctors praised Xavier for staying calm and not pulling the skewer out. He wasn’t going to do that. He already knew what to do from watching Black Panther. He remembered a scene where Michael B. Jordan’s character was stabbed. “At the end of it, how he just takes [the dagger] out and dies — so I was like, ‘Nope!'”
A Medical Marvel
Doctors said that if Xavier — a “medical marvel” — had pulled the skewer out, he could have died. The skewer went into his cheek and nearly all of the way to the back of his head. “It missed his brain,” Xavier’s dad, Shannon Miller, told Fox 4. “It missed his brain stem. It missed the nerves, everything that’s valuable in your head. It missed everything.”
Xavier and his dad and mom said Jesus protected him during the terrifying ordeal. According to Xavier, Jesus “gave His life for us and after this, it’s just like He really truly is the God Almighty.”
A Living, Walking Miracle
Miller prayed during the hours-long surgery. “I said, ‘Lord, I don’t care … I know you have a plan.’ I said ‘if it’s Your will to take him, take him.'” The surgery was a success. Miller credits God with saving his son’s life. “Only God could’ve directed things to happen in a way that would save him like this. That was a miracle. It was a miracle.”
Gabrielle Cunningham, Xavier’s mom, choked up in an interview with Fox News. “Every day I see a miracle in my house,” she said. “He is a living, walking miracle. The hand of God was on my son.”
The experience, while terrifying, strengthened his family’s faith, Miller said. “It makes the Gospel come to life. And it makes just everything very real — very alive.”
Xavier made a full recovery. His town’s mayor knew what had happened. He declared an October Saturday as “Xavier Cunningham Miracle Day.”
