Proof The Bible Is True

I tossed and turned, sweaty and in a panic, gripped by my dream. My barn cat, Two Socks, was fleeing some four-legged predator, running for his life. I chased after them, out of breath and helpless. The dream cut abruptly to a different scene. I was in the yard working in my flower garden on my acre on Blue Mountain in northwest Colorado. It was a bright, sunny afternoon. I looked up from the flower bed when a huge bird cast a shadow over me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Two Socks nonchalantly strolling out of the barn. [More]

Eight o’clock on a May morning, and Micah, my 17-year-old daughter, had already retreated to our bonus room upstairs. It had been her makeshift eleventh-grade classroom ever since schools had moved to remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic.   From the kitchen, I listened for the sound of her tapping on her laptop or her and her classmates talking in their Google Meet sessions with their teachers. Nothing. I resisted the urge to check on her. Way too often for my liking, Micah was texting friends and commenting on their Snapchat and Instagram posts about the fun they were having together. [More]

“Tiki!” I yelled frantically.   Our little white poodle mix, Tiki, had slipped out the door earlier that evening while I was carrying groceries into the house. Now I was scouring the neighborhood trying to find him. My seven-year-old son, Jordan, and my three-year-old daughter, Julia, were in tow.   Please, God, I prayed. Bring Tiki home. The kids have lost so much already.   The last few months had been difficult. After getting divorced, I could no longer afford our house in Indianapolis. The kids and I moved in with my parents in northern Indiana, 150 miles away from the city. Change [More]

I awoke, startled. Who were these people crowded in my bedroom? What were they doing there?   “Lois.” It was my mother, hovering anxiously near my bed. “It’s a flash flood,” she said. “The kitchen has already flooded.” She was holding a box of soda crackers—what I’d later learn was the only thing she’d managed to grab in her rush to escape the rising water.   June 4, 1940. I was 12 years old. It had started raining earlier that day, a sudden and unrelenting downpour on our little town of Homer, Nebraska. By that afternoon, our basement had flooded, [More]

My room at University Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, was crowded. I gazed up at the faces of my pastor, William Cox, and deacons from our church, including my husband, Brooks, who were gathered around my bed.   For more than a year, I had been fighting a losing battle against a strange liver ailment and had recently lingered in a hepatic coma for three days before coming around. It seemed I had been on the critical list more often than not. But that day I felt relatively good, if weak, and my mind, thankfully, was clear. I caught Brooks’s eye [More]

In July 1973, when I was 17, a drought struck my family’s farm in Burnsville, Minnesota. It began with several days without rain. Normal for summertime. But the hot, dry days stretched into weeks. Our farm was our livelihood. We counted on the profits from the corn crop to get us through the year, and the corn was dying before our eyes.   My father was a man of faith. He prayed before every meal and firmly believed God would look out for our family. Each day, Mom and I would get up, hoping for rain. Each day, Dad would expect it, even [More]

I looked over my holiday shopping list. Two weeks until Christmas and I had everyone in the family covered—except for my daughter, Christel. I was a little stuck on her present. The one thing she wanted, I had no power to give.   Christel and her husband, Mike, had been trying to have a baby ever since they got married, 10 years earlier. Now, at age 33, after countless treatments and consultations, she didn’t know if she could take one more failed pregnancy test.   I looked back at my Christmas list and Christel’s name with nothing beside it. God, [More]

“After the article is an audio interview with her.” Admin   Blood was everywhere. The drunk driver collided with the family when they were on their way back from church service. Angela’s 15-year-old body laid lifeless in the car. Nevertheless, the family refused to accept death, and they prayed.   Suddenly, a gust of wind blew over the car, and her lifeless body gasped for air as she miraculously regained consciousness. This was the beginning of a long list of miracles God performed as He showed Himself faithful to His Word as prayer went forth with steadfast faith!   Steadfast [More]

“There are many wonders to see if we just look for them.” Admin   The gray sky outside my kitchen window matched how I felt inside. Hopeless. I sighed and turned away. Life had lost all meaning.   Nearly a year earlier, on a sunny Fourth of July day, I drove to a nearby lake to celebrate with friends and family. It was my birthday. After a long workweek, I was looking forward to our picnic. And I couldn’t wait to get in the water. I loved to swim.   “Here I go,” I shouted, laughing, as I dove headfirst [More]

”I’ll be back in a couple hours,” Dad said as the screen door slammed shut that late afternoon.   Two hours, I told myself. You can do this. I took a long, deep breath and turned to face Mom. Through her cataracts, at least, she couldn’t see the worry in my face. Keeping Mom’s anxiety at bay while she struggled with Alzheimer’s could be next to impossible. If she had an episode, I didn’t know if I could handle it alone, especially at the end of the day.   Read More: She Feared Being Alone with Her Mom with Alzheimer’s [More]

I live near Omaha, in southeastern Nebraska. If I ran to the basement every time I heard a tornado siren go off, I’d never get anything done. So when a siren wailed one Friday in June, just two days before Father’s Day, I didn’t pay it much mind. I wanted to get my dusting done before settling down for the day. Besides, it wasn’t even raining, with barely a cloud in the early-evening sky. Maybe they’re testing the system, I thought. They do that a lot around here.   Asher, our 12-year-old grandson who lived with us, winced at the [More]

04/16/21 I recently updated my post “Miracle On The Howard Frankland Bridge” with some pictures of the vehicle taken after the accident at the garage where it was towed. Check it out, I’m sure you’ll find it interesting.  Admin

Before heading to camp that summer I double-checked that I had everything I needed. Toothbrush. Check. Socks. Check. I touched my neck to make sure I was wearing my great grandmother’s necklace, a simple rose pendant on a gold chain. Check. I grabbed my bag and headed out the door.   I arrived at camp and quickly found my friends. “Come play capture the flag with us!” they said. The game was messier than we anticipated because the grounds were muddy from rain the week before. When we went to the bathroom to clean up I looked in the mirror [More]

My very first assignment as a minister was to an inner-city parish in Camden, New Jersey. There was drug dealing and violent crime within sight of our home, and rough characters knocked on our door at all hours of the day and night.   Not long after we arrived, I had to attend a week-long church conference out of town. I dreaded leaving my wife and three children alone in our new neighborhood. God, I prayed, take care of them.   My first spare moment at the conference, I called home to make sure all was well. My wife assured [More]

Here in the Midwest, we’re used to frigid winters, but that morning seemed colder than usual.   Maybe it was because my husband wasn’t sleeping next to me. He had gone out of town on a long trip. It was just me looking after our three daughters. We lived out in the country—no neighbors within shouting distance, and I felt vulnerable. At night I made sure to lock the doors and I prayed God would watch over us.   I’d woken up shivering, with a pounding headache. It was really cold, even for our 170-year-old house. Did our furnace break [More]

My pickup’s headlights pierced through the murky twilight as I sped up the country road through the woods. I needed to get home… if home was still there. Up ahead, fallen trees spilled out onto the asphalt like a pile of giant pick-up sticks. I slammed on the brakes. I would have to go on by foot, three quarters of a mile through the debris and the dark. I hadn’t been to church in 40 years, but now I prayed harder than ever. Please God, help me find my family.   Earlier that September evening, four funnel clouds had formed [More]

Lisa. Pray for Lisa. It was the strangest thing, this urge that suddenly came over me. It was as if an actual voice had spoken, firm and commanding.   Pray for Lisa? I prayed for my six-year-old daughter every night, just like I did for her brother and sister. But why now?   We were on the road, headed to my parents’ house for Christmas. Lisa was riding with my brother Bobby up ahead. I was following along in my car with my two other children.   Bobby was holding the speed limit, just like I had asked him to. [More]

My husband has a soft spot for strays. Driving down the highway one rainy day, we spotted a hulking mass of grayish-black fur, with paws the size of a bear’s, wandering along the roadside. “We already have two dogs and two cats,” I protested as he pulled over.   “We can’t just leave him there,” he said. “No telling what will happen to him.” He opened the door and the dog climbed in.   “Okay,” I agreed, “but we have to try hard to find his owner.” The dog seemed friendly enough, but there was a look about him that [More]

Ever since my husband, Ricardo, lost his job and we lost our home, I’d said the same prayer every day. Lord, help us find an apartment. Lots of light, warm and homey, a new kitchen, a clean, fully tiled bathroom. Outdoor space, like a balcony, would be nice, but asking way too much. A decent place would do.   Ricardo didn’t believe in prayer. But he didn’t have any other answers. We were renting part of a rundown house in Rockford, Illinois, not ideal conditions to raise our eight-year-old son.   It was dark and cramped, the floors cold and [More]

A teacher’s supposed to have the answers. I can teach my fourth graders the state capitals and how to write cursive; I can list all the books in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series.   But I can’t explain why some children died in the tornado that hit our school last May and the ones with me survived. All I can tell you is that the tragedy doesn’t mean God was absent.   My colleagues and I went back three weeks later to see the devastation where Plaza Towers Elementary once stood. Most of the debris had been hauled [More]

I thanked God that morning for the water-stained ceiling tiles. They were as much a miracle to me as a clear blue sky. When I opened my eyes after a fitful night’s sleep and saw them above my hospital bed, I knew I was still alive. I was pretty sure there were no ceiling tiles in heaven.   I was 39 years old, and wasn’t likely to live out the week, much less see 40. As the morning dragged on, my family and the parishioners of my church came in and out of my room, praying for my recovery.   [More]

On Mother’s Day we celebrate all the miracles of motherhood.   But back in 1959, Peggy Rasmussen didn’t feel at all like celebrating. For Peggy, it was a reminder that she might never be a mother. She’d been praying and praying for a child, but it just didn’t seem like it was going to happen.   Then Peggy received a Mother’s Day message that spoke straight to her heart. Something that told her she was meant to be a mother after all.   My husband, Milton, and I were at church. So many happy families filled the pews, moms doting [More]

I tapped my pen against the kitchen table and stared at my to-do list. Plan side dishes, get the turkey, tidy up the house—Thanksgiving was two days away, and there was so much to get done.   But that wasn’t why I was anxious. My son, Bill, was driving home from school for Thanksgiving break. His first visit since he’d gone off to college. And he was late.   The phone rang. My husband, William, answered it. As he paced around the kitchen with the receiver to his ear, I heard snippets of his conversation: Car trouble. Transmission. Tow truck. [More]

I stopped by my mother’s house to water the plants while she was in the nursing home. Mom wasn’t doing well, and the doctors had told me to prepare for the worst. But in her house, surrounded by her familiar possessions—the photographs on the dresser, the vase on the dining room table, the throw on the sofa—everything seemed reassuringly unchanged, as if Mom could just walk through the door at any minute, her old self again.   I stepped into the living room. My eyes fell on an old wooden jigsaw puzzle in the shape of a puppy. It sat [More]

Every year, thousands flock to San Francisco to walk across that fabled vermilion span, the Golden Gate Bridge. They come for the sweeping views of the city, the fog-wreathed hillsides abutting cold gray waters. The bridge rises 220 feet above the bay. Below, sharks and sea lions swim and dangerous currents churn. Tourists crowd the walkway, braced against the wind, snapping photos.   On a cool, foggy September afternoon, I boarded a bus to the Golden Gate Bridge. I wasn’t a tourist. I didn’t care about the view. I was going to jump.   I sat at the back of [More]

“Some seniors from church are going to the Holy Land, and I’ve decided to join them,” my mother announced one evening. My brothers and sisters and I were relieved. We’d been worried Mom might never get over losing Dad. Her joy in life had gone out of her since he died. Even though she went to church daily, she seemed lonely and lost, as if her sorrow were too deep for anyone or anything to touch.   For years, my parents had talked about visiting the places they’d read about in the Bible, so I hoped this trip would help [More]

I was never going to get better. In fact, I was going to get worse. A vein attached to my retina had hemorrhaged. An occlusion, the doctor called it. The pressure from the blood slowly building up behind my right eye was nearly unbearable.   Laser surgery would relieve the pain but not stem the loss of vision in my eye. In time, macular degeneration would cause my left eye to go blind as well. It was already starting. Darkness was taking over. Just when I thought a new life was beginning.   My wife, Shirley, and I had retired [More]