Proof The Bible Is True

A friend and I had just finished having dinner at our favorite spot in Reno, Nevada, where I’d lived for 23 years. We paid the bill, got up and hugged in a tearful goodbye. She was the last friend I’d see before I moved across the country.   “Are you sure about this, Joanie?” she asked. “What is there for you in West Virginia?”   It was a question I couldn’t answer. I’d simply woken up one morning in early February with an undeniable urge to return to Huntington, West Virginia. I asked God why. In Reno, I had friends, [More]

Six years after becoming a widow, I decided it was time to leave the home in Wisconsin where I’d lived with my husband for 22 years and move back to Illinois to be closer to my daughter, Laura, and my son, Steve. It was a hard decision, and I sometimes second-guessed myself. At least Steve would be helping me search for just the right place. He remodeled houses in Illinois and knew what to look for.   The night I put my house on the market, I said a quick prayer. God, I trust that you are able to guide me to the [More]

I was at a Native American reservation in California, two hours from the nearest big city. A desert landscape of scrub brush and rocky slopes extended in all directions.   I was here to run. And I was pretty intimidated.   It was November 2019, and I had just arrived at the Ragnar Los Coyotes trail relay race. The annual race is a grueling multiday relay through the rugged beauty of Los Coyotes Indian Reservation in San Diego County.   More than 200 runners were here, camped out in a small city of tents. I knew no one. Everyone looked way younger—and fitter—than [More]

Go back into the house!   Sandra Farney, of Reno, Nevada, was backing out of her driveway when she heard the voice. It was a man’s voice, coming from inside her own mind, cutting through her thoughts with surprising force. Shocked, Sandra slammed on her brakes. She debated going back inside, but she was late for work. She had to go. Then she heard the voice again. It was more insistent.   Go back into the house, now!   Read More: How Hearing God’s Voice Provides Comfort and Reassurance | Guideposts

A figure loomed in the corner of my bedroom, a shadowy specter the size and shape of a man. It was faceless, yet I could feel its burning gaze on me. As soon as I registered it, the specter was upon me, embracing me with its shadow arms, enveloping me in darkness. I was pinned, paralyzed and helpless.   I woke up to the sound of my own screams, my heart pounding until I realized I was awake. I was safe. Even though the event had felt acute and urgent, it wasn’t real. Just a terrible nightmare. I wasn’t used [More]

It was a promise I’d made back in 1971. To repay an act of kindness with a trip to the salon. At the time, my husband, Joe, was a pilot in New York. We’d bought a house in New Jersey, not too far away. I had my hands full raising two children under the age of five. Then the airline cut costs. Joe was laid off. He took any odd job he could find, from painting houses to pumping gas. I got a job teaching at an elementary school. But we struggled to make ends meet. We put ourselves on a budget.   [More]

I sat in my car, overlooking a shimmering intercoastal waterway, the night sky studded with stars. Everything around me had a vibrant, otherworldly glow. This is West Palm Beach, I realized. My family and I used to live here. But we’d moved away about a year ago…   I was aware of someone sitting next to me in the driver’s seat. Someone else sat behind me. I couldn’t tell who they were, but their presence was comforting. I felt so at peace here. As if everything made sense.   “This is why you’re here,” the presence behind me said. “This is why [More]

I was searching for something, though I didn’t quite know what. I searched frantically, though I didn’t quite know why. “Lift the lid on the third box,” I heard a calm voice say. I did as I’d been directed. Inside was the thing I’d been looking for, though I still couldn’t see what it was.   I awoke feeling incredibly relieved, my heart still pounding. What a crazy dream! I glanced at the clock beside me. Oh no! I was late for my shift at the restaurant. I jumped out of bed, rushed to get ready and dashed out the door.   Read [More]

I held up the hat I’d just finished and burst out laughing. It was my first attempt at knitting and hadn’t gone as planned. I’d made a mistake somewhere along the way, and the lavender hat I’d wanted to make for myself had turned out too small to fit me or anyone else. It was no bigger than the palm of my hand!   I have to show this to the team at work tomorrow, I thought. I was a pediatric cardiac sonographer at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital, in Nashville, Tennessee. It was a stressful job, and humor was always [More]

I was going to miss my flight.   I was at Myrtle Beach International Airport in South Carolina, waiting to fly out to Michigan and then New York, where two days earlier my 44-year-old daughter, Laurie, had died of a heroin overdose. I had lost my 45-year-old son to the same drug a year and a half earlier. Shock and heartbreak couldn’t begin to describe what I was feeling.   I already had my boarding pass when I got to the airport, but something nudged me to go to the ticket counter to check on my flight before I went through security. The agent told [More]

One by one I wrote out the checks for the monthly bills and stacked the stamped envelopes neatly on the kitchen table. I checked and rechecked the balance in my bank account.   My years as a single mother before getting remarried had really taught me how to make every dollar count. God had never failed to provide for my family, but that was no excuse for not sticking to a budget. I wasn’t one to dream about things we couldn’t afford. Well, except the night before.   What a crazy dream I’d had! I told my daughter, Shelly, about [More]

My wife, Jennette, had dropped me off at the Atlanta airport that day to catch a flight to Jacksonville, Florida. I had my guitar with me and my gig bag. I’m a composer and singer, and I had a show that night. Back then, just eight years ago—it seems like eons—there wasn’t any Wi-Fi on the plane, so I would be out of touch en route. No problem. Jennette was used to being in charge at home. We had three boys. The youngest, Micah, was at summer camp, and the older two, Josiah and Ricardo, were swimming at a friend’s [More]

I checked my ski boots and took a wary look at the gray, wintry sky. Dime-size snowflakes had been coming down for two days now to the tune of about three feet of fresh powder at Oregon’s Crater Lake National Park. Great for recreational skiers, but those of us on the park’s volunteer ski patrol had to be on alert. Weather like this could mean search-and-rescue operations—everything from lost skiers to trapped avalanche victims. The challenge, as always, was to reach people while they were still alive.   I felt at home in the park. I’d hiked here for 30 [More]

On the plains of northwest Oklahoma, you can see for miles: nothing but prairie grass, clumps of cedar trees and rugged red-rock canyons. But even with my binoculars, I could barely make out the helicopters, one after the other, dumping water on a wildfire at the horizon. I wasn’t concerned by the small plume of smoke snaking skyward. It had to be at least 50 miles away, across the South Canadian River even.   That afternoon, my uncle Larry and cousin Tony and I had driven to this 4,000-acre ranch for a planned three days of turkey hunting. Larry had [More]

Zach Short: Harvest time. That’s when it gets crazy busy for farmers. We work from first light until dark, not stopping for anything. All that matters is getting the crop in. My family’s been farming for four generations here in Kansas, and I can tell you, it’s not just a job. It’s a life. It’s in your blood, your soul.   We raise milo, corn, soybeans, wheat and hay. We also run a shop where we rebuild combines, and we use our equipment to harvest crops for other farmers. On that day, October 25, 2014, we’d been hired to cut soybeans. [More]

A thousand feet. Just over three football fields lined up end to end. But at 28,000 feet above sea level—an altitude climbers call the “death zone”—a single step can require an exhausting effort, even when breathing supplemental oxygen, which I was.   I prayed nothing would go wrong with my equipment on this final, solo push to the summit. Without gas the climb would be almost impossible.   There are very few places on earth where a man can stand at 28,000 feet. Mount Everest is one. It was where I stood that May night last year under the brilliance [More]

At 4 p.m. last June 14, my brother Jack Sullivan was just crawling down into a ten-foot-deep trench, which ran down the center of Washington Street, a main thoroughfare in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.   It was near quitting time. Jack is a welder, and he wanted to finish one particular part of his job before he left. Jack said goodbye to the other men as they quit, took his welding lead in his right hand, lowered himself and his electric power cable into the trench. His head was well below the street surface.   Traffic up above was heavy. Jack [More]

This late in December, the cow path near our house in Tennessee was still covered with leaves, but I knew snow would be falling soon enough. My younger brother, Buddy Earl, and I were on an important mission: Go to Uncle Tommie’s place and get a goose. The trek over Little Mountain and back to get there would be worth it. Uncle Tommie raised the best geese around, and he’d offered to give us one for Christmas dinner.   Dark clouds were gathering in the sky above and a cold wind came in from the north. As usual, Buddy Earl lagged [More]

Four pairs of children’s shoes were lined up on our kitchen countertop, ready for a good shine before church in the morning. It was near midnight on Christmas Eve 1968, and everyone else in the house was asleep.   I had the TV on low in the living room. The astronauts manning the Apollo 8 spacecraft kept me company, the footage from the mission a comforting hum in the background. As I worked the polish into my daughter’s little saddle shoe, my mind kept wandering to her upcoming appointment at New York Presbyterian Hospital.   Lauren was four years old. Outwardly, nothing was wrong [More]

How would I get through Christmas when my sweet dog, my ever-present companion, Freddy Lee, wouldn’t be here with me? I reached over to where he was lying next to me in bed and ran my hand slowly down his back. This is our last night together, I thought, and in a few days Christmas will come without you.   I hadn’t panicked when I noticed him limping on our walks. How bad could it be, since he’d passed his recent checkup with a clean bill of health? I was shocked when I’d taken him back to the vet only to get [More]

My daughter, Tori, knelt in the parking lot of our condo petting a scraggly black-and-white cat without a collar. “Can we keep her, Mom, please? I already know what to call her. Oreo.”   “Honey, you know I’d love to help this cat. But … ”   We already had two cats. There was simply no room for this bedraggled little stray. But how could I tell that to my child?   “Where else is she going to go, Mom?”   “All right,” I sighed. “We’ll take her for the time being. But just remember, she can’t stay. God will [More]

You can get a kitten,” I promised my seven-year-old daughter, Cali. “As soon as we get settled in our new apartment.” Her life had been uprooted when her father and I divorced, and I wanted to give her something to look forward to. So one Saturday morning, shortly after we unpacked the last box, we headed to North Bay Animal Services to pick out her new pet.   There were plenty of cats to choose from, but Cali had her heart set on an orange-and-white kitten. “Actually, we’ve got two of those,” the attendant told us. “Brothers from the same litter, in [More]

Beth, our dietary manager, peeked in my office door. “I want you to meet our newest resident,” she said. I smiled and turned in my chair.   Welcoming people and helping them adjust to their new surroundings is one of my responsibilities as chaplain at Madrid Home Communities, a nursing home with 110 residents in central Iowa. I was always happy to greet a new resident. But Beth was holding a tiny calico kitten.   “One of the nurses found her at the front door,” she said. “She had her paws against the glass like she wanted to come in. [More]

Six days in the hospital after open-heart surgery, and I was finally coming home. My neighbor drove me in her car up my street. A million thoughts clattered through my head. How was I going to manage? No more nurses and doctors monitoring me 24 hours a day. The stitches keeping my chest closed up caused pain if I tried to lie down. How would I get to sleep at night in an upright position? What would happen if I tripped or fell on the way to the kitchen or the bathroom?   Most of all, I worried about my [More]

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]

The dream felt so real. I was in my childhood home, the townhouse we lived in when we first moved to Virginia. My grandfather was there too.   I could hear a storm brewing. Somehow I knew the house would be flooded. We needed to hurry. As we threw belongings into boxes, Grandpa and I laughed and joked around. Even with disaster looming, I wasn’t worried. Grandpa was the bravest person. He would protect me.   My grandpa was my best friend growing up. My hero. Larger than life. He had been an Army helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and I loved listening to [More]