Proof The Bible Is True

Spring onions, radish, marigold and zinnia seeds, plastic trays with soil to start growing plants. The perfect items to help jump start my garden this year! I thought. I dropped them all in my shopping cart. At least I found something here at the garden store, even if it wasn’t what I’d come for. I still felt disappointed. What in the world was I going to get for my cousin Kathryn? Lord, I prayed, help me find the perfect gift to lift her spirits.   What could anyone possibly get to cheer up someone who had just received the most terrible news? Kathryn had been [More]

Pit bulls get a bad rap. They’re often viewed as violent, unpredicatble and poorly behaved, even though there is nothing to indicate they’re different from any other dog breed. Call it dog prejudice, if you will. One bad apple, and all the rest get called rotten.   But at least one pit bull can genuinely be called a hero this week.   On Monday night, Danna Smith of Huntington, West Virginia, was getting some much-needed sleep. The single mother had recently spent time in the hospital, and was responsible for raising her three children, who each have varying degrees of [More]

I was leaving the restaurant where I work when a glimmer caught my eye. The sunlight reflecting off the face of a shiny penny lying in the doorway.  Just a penny, I thought, stepping over it, leaving it for someone else to pick up. I used to believe that “pennies from heaven” were a sign that someone was watching over me. But with all the stress in my life lately, I’d stopped believing in such silly things.   Read More: Mysterious Ways: Pennies from Heaven – Guideposts

We were only 48 hours into our family’s three-week road trip when the car broke down.   White smoke billowed from the engine. The dashboard warning lights went on. “Where did all this come from?” my husband, Gareth, said. He pulled off at the next exit. I glanced at our sons in the back seat. Colin, seven, and Aidan, five, looked disappointed. We were in Michigan, in the middle of nowhere, on our way to Mackinaw Island. From there we planned to visit the Badlands of South Dakota and Mount Rushmore, then Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Glacier National Parks. It would be a [More]

Did you ever have a strange encounter you couldn’t quite explain, only to realize much later what it really meant? I had one of those experiences last night, and only this morning did I find out why. And it moved me to the core.   It was well after midnight, but I was still awake, finishing up some work. I was sitting on the couch in the living room, my eyelids feeling heavy as I stared at my laptop screen.   Just then, I heard a sound. A high-pitched squeal or cry. I stopped typing and listened. I heard it [More]

It had been one year since I had escaped my abusive marriage with my three young children, all 12 years old and under. We had just moved to the farmhouse that had once belonged to my grandparents, and I hoped I could put down some roots again.   But the fear and doubt that my ex-husband had instilled in me for 14 years lingered. Will I ever feel confident and secure again? I wondered.   Our century-old farmhouse needed some work, especially on the front deck, which was sagging and splintered and going to rot. I had very little to spend on [More]

The sun was beginning to set over Cairo. The once bustling streets were clear of tourists, and the shops selling colorful pashminas, staid black burquas, pungent Middle Eastern spices and gleaming hookah pipes were shuttered. The Muslim call to prayer echoed throughout the city.   For hours, I’d marveled at the treasures of the pharaohs on display at the Egyptian Museum and then wandered, taking in the exotic sights, smells and sounds. But now I was worried. I needed to find the bus back to my hotel…and I was hopelessly lost.   Read More: Mysterious Ways: Lost In Cairo – [More]

A wonderful and handsome couple who lived in my neighborhood had been happily married for 52 years. Together they lived the good life, entering into everything they enjoyed with zest and spirit. They were well thought of by everyone who knew them.   Cancer reared its ugly head and the lovely wife struggled with it for years. The compassion and caring between them was a beautiful thing to see. She died about a month ago and moved into the heavenly home she knew was waiting for her.   Read More: A Love Letter from Heaven – Guideposts

Graceann passed her driving test in January and received her license. She immediately began driving herself to school each morning. No more getting up super-early to wait at the bus stop, no more squeezing into a big yellow box as it wound through the city picking up kids on its way to Calvary Christian Academy.   She’d driven herself to school for more than a week—then one morning she woke up early and decided to take the bus again.   Read More: New Driver Performs a Miracle … and Saves Lives – Guideposts

Oh, how I love my morning coffee! Can’t seem to start the day without it. So imagine my distress when I pulled my can of fresh coffee grounds from the kitchen pantry shelf. It felt a little light. I looked inside. Not even enough for a single cup.   Just one more downbeat note in my life, I thought. First my painful divorce. Then the pressures of having to raise four children on my own. And now this. My salary as a bookkeeper had been stretched to the limit as it was, and coffee wasn’t in the grocery budget this [More]

Sleep is supposed to release you from your worries, your worst fears. Yet as much as I wanted and needed sleep, I doubted it would ease me. My 12-year-old daughter, June, had just emerged from a coma. Now the doctors were telling my husband and me that she’d need a series of brain surgeries if she were to survive.   Lying in bed, wrung out after another long day sitting at her bedside in the hospital, my mind replayed the horrific accident. One moment, June was riding on the back of our farm tractor with her daddy, squealing as dirt [More]

Amy Jung of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, didn’t plan on adopting a cat. She only went to the Door County Humane Society on February 8 with her son, Ethan, to play with the animals.   But one feline caught her eye. A hefty orange-and-white furball, lying on a counter. Amy asked an employee about the cat. Pudding was 8 1/2 years old and had two previous owners, a family who gave him up because their son was allergic and an older woman who had passed away.   Read More: How an Adopted Cat Saved His New Owner’s Life – Guideposts

In northeast Scotland, where I live, the Gulf Stream brings warmth to what would otherwise be a frigid climate—but it can also cause high winds. One day the weather service reported gusts topping 100 miles an hour. I almost blew away when I left for work that morning.   Fortunately, I would be spending most of my day inside at my new job assisting John, a mortgage and financial services broker. I sat at my desk, looking out the large front window, awed by the sheer power of Mother Nature. Were the brick chimneys of the old houses around us [More]

There’s one good thing about being on the road Christmas Day, I thought, driving from my parents’ house in Richmond, Virginia, back to Charlotte, North Carolina. No traffic. I’d barely seen another car on the interstate all day.   Most people were home with their families. But not me. I was a policewoman, new enough on the force that I didn’t get a choice of shifts. I’d managed to score time off Christmas Eve, but I had to be back on duty tonight.   My sergeant made it clear: “Be here for roll call before the midnight shift.” It was a four-hour [More]

I was rummaging through my attic for the Christmas decorations when I saw it. The tree. Not a real tree of course, but an artificial one I bought the year before. It stood about 18-inches tall and had it all—glimmering ornaments, fiber optic branch tips that emitted a hypnotic array of blue, pink, green and gold sparkling lights, and a gold base that rotated the entire tree while playing Christmas carols. At least that’s what was it was supposed to do. It might as well be called a lemon tree—it never worked. I’d almost completely forgotten about it.   My [More]

My wife Angela and our children were deep in slumber when I arose before dawn and walked down to the lake behind our vacation cabin at Lake Mohawk. I began pulling weeds, one of my favorite ways to unwind — quiet and simple compared to my job as a cardiologist. This was just what I needed, a two-week getaway from the stress of 14-hour days, seeing 45-60 patients, with few breaks in-between.   Unfortunately, on the drive down the night before, a disagreement had started our vacation off on a bad note. My mind was running in overdrive as I [More]

Today’s hard economic times remind me of the time 20 years ago when our own finances were tight. My husband, Steve, and I woke up that crisp fall morning in 1990 knowing exactly how broke we were. Our finances were in worse shape than the hobbyhorse lying on its side on our front lawn, broken loose from its springs.   We had no money in the bank, no cash in our pockets, not much food in the house and we were out of diapers for our baby. I added up everything we needed in my head. Diapers—about ten dollars. Baby [More]

Family tells us a Stallings man is doing well after receiving a kidney from an Indian Land woman who until recently he’d never met.   It turned out the woman, who is also doing well, was such a perfect match for him, it’s as if she’s his sister — even though they’re not related at all.   David Ensley of Stallings has suffered from polycystic kidney disease since 2001.  Things took a turn for the worse in 2009 when his kidney failed.  He needs a new one or he says he will eventually die.   But finding a donor proved difficult.  His siblings were [More]

Money slipped under the door of a man struggling to support his family brings about a Christmas miracle.   When you’re a freelance cameraman like I am, you can’t always pick and choose your assignments. Often, you accept work not out of any particular affinity you have for the subject but because you have bills to pay and a family to feed.   Sometimes, though, you’re fortunate enough to land an assignment that you can really get into and feel passionate about, even learn from. You pray for jobs like that. Well, I do anyway.   That’s why I was [More]

I’ve always enjoyed rummage sales, antique shops, flea markets, and garage sales. Whenever I go to one, my eyes inevitably drift over to the jewelry. Not because I need any fancy things, but because I’m “looking” for a bracelet that had been given to me by my parents when I was a young lady. It was a beautiful gold link bracelet with delicately carved pink flowers. For years, I wore it for dressy occasions—before I lost it. Of course, I never saw anything that quite compared, but I could hope, couldn’t I?   Recently, my husband Roger and I were [More]

From Genesis to Revelation, pages of my beloved leather-bound Bible fell to the floor every time I opened it. The once camel-colored leather was worn and faded. It broke my heart to see it in such sad shape. The NIV Thompson Chain-Reference Bible, red-letter edition, was a gift from my husband, Rick. It had lasted through his teen years and Bible College, where we’d met and he’d given it to me. I used it for Bible study, teaching Sunday school and reading daily devotions. I didn’t want to replace it, but 17 years of wear and tear had taken their [More]

Margretha had been terrified of storms for years, ever since a strong one caused a large tree to fall on her home. After a record-setting month of severe storms in Mississippi, she was on edge. She’d slept little in the last few days, worried about the weather reports warning more tornadoes were on the way. “It seemed like I had been saying weather-related prayers almost ceaselessly for the last several weeks,” Margretha says. But they didn’t ease her fears.   Read More: A Mysterious Sight in the Sky – Guideposts

It was one of those dreadful nights we get here in Minnesota in the middle of winter. The moisture in the air gets trapped and a curtain of fog descends all around, mixing with the snow on the ground and the flurries falling from the sky to white out everything. Normally I wouldn’t drive in that kind of weather, but I’d been at a Tupperware party all evening, I was eight months pregnant and I was so exhausted I just wanted to get home already.   I was only on the road for a minute before I regretted my decision [More]

It was August 1969, a hot, humid night in Ban Me Thuot, Vietnam. I was stationed with the US Army as Communications Chief in charge of all radio communications, located inside the Command Post, a four-room reinforced concrete bunker, surrounded by sandbags.   I got undressed and into my bunk, hoping to get a few hours of sleep before I was on duty again. I rolled over and looked at the clock: 11:30 p.m. Seconds later I heard a voice say, “Get up out of bed now and get fully dressed, steel pot, weapon, everything, and go down to the [More]

 I sat in church, the pastor’s words a blur of sound. I knew I should be listening, but instead I wondered what was waiting for me at home. Sunday dinner was the one meal all week when my family sat down together, and that meant facing my father. He’d usually get drunk, and that meant a whole meal of him humiliating me. Especially because of my stutter. I was ten years old, and had done nothing to deserve my father’s scorn.   Even trying to keep my sentences short, I always got caught up on the first few syllables as [More]

I love being an EMT. Nothing makes me prouder than serving the community and helping folks in need. So when the local volunteer fire department asked me to monitor their members at trainings and on fire scenes I didn’t hesitate to say yes.   “We could really use more firefighters,” said a volunteer one day. “The certification class is coming up. Why don’t you take it?”   Helping out was one thing but me? A firefighter? I didn’t think I was strong enough. Plus, I’m afraid of heights! Although it would be nice to be able to help out in a [More]

Bill, bill, another bill, I thought, sorting through the envelopes I’d carried in from the mailbox outside to read to my husband, Bob. Complications of diabetes had robbed him of his eyesight, and now it seemed as if our financial obligations were going to rob us of much more.   Read More: Mysterious Ways: God Will Provide – Guideposts