Proof The Bible Is True

Two miles separated my house from Carver’s General Store, but I didn’t mind the trip when Poochy was with me.   I pedaled my J.C. Higgins bike down Graham Road. Poochy always ran right alongside me, round velvety ears flapping, pink tongue hanging out. Poochy was my best friend that summer in the 1940s. My only friend. I was 11.   Dad lived in a mental hospital 50 miles away. Mom worked long hours and didn’t make enough for someone to babysit me. I was on my own. Mom always said God was with me, but I sure couldn’t feel [More]

“The video is missing but you can read the story by clicking View Transcript on the page.” Admin   Fran and her husband, Tom, parked on an isolated Nantucket beach. They wanted to watch the sunset.   When the light was gone, they decided to go back to their inn. Tom stepped on the gas. The tire spun in the sandy mud. Each attempt to get out made them sink deeper.   Pushing the car didn’t work either. They were very far from the main road. God, Fran asked, send someone our way.   Read More: Stuck in the Mud [More]

My son, Matt, was diagnosed with leukemia at the end of April 2001. He was 16 years old. We made the trip from our home in Louisiana and checked him into St. Jude Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, for chemotherapy.   Prayer sustained Matt—and our entire family—through those brutal months. No matter what happened, Matt kept an unshakable faith that God would heal him. After several chemo treatments and a stem-cell transplant from his father, the leukemia seemed to go into remission.   Matt stayed at St. Jude so that his health could be monitored, but I slowly got used to [More]

In my studio on New York City’s Upper West Side, I train professional opera, cabaret and Broadway singers right alongside talented amateurs from every occupation you could imagine. When I look out of my eighth-floor window onto Broadway, I know Frank Sinatra was right: If you can make it here…   Competition is fierce. But often it’s that competition that forges strong bonds between people. All different types of people. And it seems that every type of person has come through my studio. One February afternoon about three years ago, I received my most unexpected visitor ever.   Read More: [More]

These righteous testimonials illustrate a heaven-sent presence that provided spiritual comfort, aid and healing.   As God says in Isaiah 41:10, “I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” In the amazing cases of these three Mysterious Ways readers, that righteous hand was a physical presence that brought them much-needed comfort, miraculous aid and spiritual healing.   Read More: 3 Mysterious Stories of Divine Hands at Work – Guideposts

“Be prepared for the worst,” the fire chief warned us that January night last year. “There’s been a lot of damage.”   A little after midnight my neighbors and I had been forced out into the cold by a blaze in our apartment building. Now, hours later, the fire extinguished, it was finally safe for us to reenter our homes—what was left of them, anyway—and collect a few essential belongings.   Accompanied by a firefighter and a Red Cross volunteer, I opened the door to my apartment, feeling sick with anxiety. I didn’t have renter’s insurance. What if I had [More]

Ah, summer vacation! I hunted along the rocky shoreline of North Truro, Massachu-setts, for sea glass.   I’d been collecting the stuff for years but had yet to find a single piece this trip.   What I had accomplished was to finish reading a book about guardian angels. The author claimed they were always near. That gave me an idea. Could an angel help me find a pretty piece of sea glass?   Read More: Angel Glass – Guideposts

That Christmas got off to a promising start.   Alison and I and the children—two of our four were still at home—had picked out a tree and its lights were twinkling merrily in the living room. I had lit a fire to take the edge off our raw English air. And then 12-year-old Matthew hesitantly asked me a question that would have been perfectly natural in any other household: “Dad, would it be all right if I put on some Christmas music?”   “Of course,” I said, too quickly.   I braced myself. As strains of “Hark! The Herald Angels [More]

Mamaw Clark’s faded homespun skirt trailed in the leaves as she walked along the creek at the forest’s edge. Mamaw bent down beneath a cedar sapling and picked a handful of wild mint.   I took a handful myself and breathed in the sweet, cool scent.   “Don’t go eating that there mint,” Mamaw warned me. “It’s still green as grass and will upset your innards. You can chew on a sprig, but don’t swallow a drop or you’ll be sorry.”   Mamaw was a fourth generation medicine woman. Her own mother was full-blooded Cherokee. Mamaw didn’t talk about that [More]

Out of work at Christmas. Was there any worse time to be unemployed? The baby was only nine months old, but his brother, Buddy, was three.   “I hope he’s not expecting anything special,” I said to my husband. It was all we could do to keep food on the table. And being proud, we didn’t let on to family and friends how bad our circumstances were.   “At least we have a tree,” I said. We’d sprung for it before I lost my cashier job. It almost called more attention to our predicament. We had a tree, all right, [More]

The weather report explained the record-breaking cold this Friday as a polar vortex. With the wind-chill factor, it was minus 45 degrees outside. Snow was on its way. We won’t be able to bring Suzan home this afternoon, I thought, looking sadly out the window. Our daughter had started her freshman year at Kent State University. My husband, Wayne, and I were looking forward to having her home for Christmas break. Airline flights were grounded and TV alerts flashed on every channel: Stay indoors, avoid driving. Even the 35-mile drive to Kent State would be too risky. Wayne pulled into the driveway in [More]

I relaxed in our backyard under the shade of a big tree, while my five-year-old daughter, Paula, splashed and laughed in the pool. After a while, she hoisted herself up onto the edge for a quiet break. The sun shone bright overhead, our dog asleep in the grass. It was a perfect moment, everything hushed. A peacefulness hung over the entire yard.   Read More: 5 Comforting Stories of Angel Encounters with Children – Guideposts

I had never been more homesick or stressed than that Christmas in 1981, the year my husband, Charles, and I pulled up stakes and moved to the Texas badlands to work in the vast oil fields of the Panhandle.   We were thousands of miles away from home for the first time. Our relationship was young, so we didn’t have the comfort of long years of habit to smooth over the bumps in life. Money was tight.   If I hadn’t been madly in love with the man with the turquoise-blue eyes, I would have run home to Mama. As [More]

“Race you to the water!” my cousin Emily yelled.   My cousins Emily, Meridel, Hannah and I were at the beach, having a blast on our family vacation. The four of us splashed into the ocean and started swimming, and pretty soon we were in water up to our chests.   Suddenly, Meridel and Hannah screamed, “Wave!”   Read More: Danger in the Water – Guideposts

Passengers milled around the platform at Chicago’s Dearborn Train Station. My mother pressed a few dollar bills into my hand.   “Your aunt and uncle will meet you at the train station in Los Angeles,” she said. She handed the conductor another bill. “Look after my little girl.”   It was 1932, and even at seven years old I knew enough about the Depression to sense the weight of the few dollars my mother had somehow managed to scrape together. Dad had died two years before, and Mom worked long hours as a secretary to support my sister and me. [More]

My wife, Linda, and I planned to drive through the night from New Orleans to South Carolina to visit our parents for Christmas. Linda worried about our car. My Mercury was 11 years old, with no hubcaps and an exterior dinged up worse than a boxer. I insisted it was in good running condition, though. “Just missing a spare tire, that’s all.”   Two in the morning, somewhere in Alabama, I heard a loud bang, followed by a flapping sound. It was just our luck—a tire had blown out.   Read More: The Light of God’s Grace – Guideposts

Emergency medicine doesn’t take holidays off, but this was the first time I’d pulled an EMT shift on Christmas. Already we were racing to a studio apartment in an independent living community to answer the night’s first 911 call. I couldn’t help thinking this was supposed to be a night of miracles, not injuries.   The ambulance had barely come to a full stop when my partner, Dan, and I jumped out with a gurney. A staff member from the facility waited at the apartment door.   “Miss Lily had a fall,” she said as we knelt down around the [More]

On the drive home from a fishing trip with his best friend, a teenage boy is protected by a guardian angel.   Church on Sunday couldn’t compete with a pond full of crappie. That’s where my best friend, Johnathon, and I were headed if the minister ever finished his sermon.   “Take a good look around you,” he went on. “Think the people you see are the only ones in this church today? Think again. There are angels in our midst, watching over us, waiting to perform one of God’s miracles in our lives.”   Johnathon gave me a smirk. [More]

She wanted to send a thank-you note to the school whose student-athletes had helped them after their automobile accident but was in for a surprise..   Watch: Mysterious Ways: Gloria University – Guideposts

Graveyard shift as a welder at a shipyard was one way for a poor student to make ends meet.   On my first job fixing an aircraft carrier, sparks burned through all my clothes. It got so cold outside not even the blowtorch warmed me.   I desperately needed a welder’s jacket, but a good one was made from tough leather and cost more than $100. I couldn’t afford it. I was about to begin work one evening when a gust of wind chilled me to the bone. Lord, please help me get through this shift.   Read More: The Shift [More]

There wasn’t a minute to spare in my hectic life as a single mother and sales rep. That morning I dropped the kids at school and sped off to meet a client, not even bothering to fasten my seat belt.   My wheels slid on a slippery spot. My car was headed for an oncoming pickup! God, help me!   Read More: The Divine Doctor – Guideposts

There were two ways I relaxed: quilting and smoking. Quilting was my passion. Smoking was my addiction. I was a nurse. I knew cigarettes were slowly killing me. But I just couldn’t stop. My good sense couldn’t stop me. My husband couldn’t stop me. My kids couldn’t stop me. I was a smoker, and that was that.   I loved the ritual: Take the cigarette out of the pack and put it in my mouth, flick the wheel on the lighter and watch as a spark becomes a flame, suck in and taste that first drag of smoke. A ciga- [More]

I wasn’t as spry as I used to be, but I liked to walk, rather than drive, around my small town. Shopping, the doctor’s office, the bank were all nearby, clustered around a busy five-way intersection that connected to the thruway.   Seeing the traffic as I strolled back home, I was glad to be on foot.   Then I heard a growl. A dog—not looking quite right—stalked toward me. I backed up. Grrrrr! A snarl from behind. I nearly jumped out of my skin. At my heels was a second dog, as angry as the first. Oh, no, I’ve stepped in the [More]

The new sanctuary of the Bettendorf, Iowa, church where I pastored was nearing completion. As we drove up one Saturday afternoon, my wife and I saw smoke pouring from the open windows.   My wife called the fire department from our house next door, while I ran into the church to try to stop the blaze. Inside I threw a flattened box over the flames, stomping on top as fast as I could. This was a losing battle.   Read More: Angelic Assistance To Fight the Flames – Guideposts

Look at these fish! A fat one with a yellow back and white spots, so close I could touch it. A school of skinny silver minnows, glinting in the sunlight that penetrated the clear water. I couldn’t believe I’d never snorkeled before. What fun!   My husband and I were stationed overseas in Naples, Italy. A couple we’d met, Sonnie and Al, invited us to a secluded Mediterranean beach. “Joyce, you have to snorkel,” Sonnie urged.   “I’m not much of a swimmer,” I said.   “We’ll stay together, close to shore,” Sonnie said. “We’ll be there to help.”   Now [More]

Everything—my whole world—felt gray, colorless, flat. The beeping machines of the ICU. The doctors and nurses who came in and out, sounds and images. All dim. Like I was trapped in a thick, inescapable fog.   I’d struggled with depression for years so I recognized the signs. I looked over at my husband, Rob, asleep in a chair in the corner. These last two weeks had been an ordeal for both of us. Why was I not getting better?   Nothing made sense. The doctors couldn’t even tell me what was wrong. I clenched my hands into tight fists. I [More]

I walked out into my front yard, hoping that some fresh air would lift my mood. Ever since moving from the city to the country a decade ago, taking a stroll around the five acres I called home always gave me a feeling of peace and serenity.   But not today. The economy was bad and my business was slow. With Christmas weeks away, I had barely saved enough money to buy a little tree and some treats for my cats. I only had a small safety net left for emergencies.   Please don’t let anything go wrong, I told God. [More]