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]

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]

“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 don’t know about your cat, but my cat, Desmond, sees things. Things that I can’t see. Yes, he has senses more acute than mine—smell, hearing, etc. I’ll give him that. Still, that doesn’t explain the moments he seems transfixed by something invisible to me. Almost as if he can see into another dimension, another world. How is that possible?   Dr. Linda Bender, a veterinarian and author of the book Animal Wisdom: Learning from the Spiritual Lives of Animals, believes that experiences like I have with Desmond occur because animals are more naturally attuned to the spiritual world.   “Humans have [More]

It seems incredible, but what if we had the chance to share in our loved ones’ journeys from this life to the next? In a mystical phenomenon known as a shared-death experience, people report that they have been given the chance to see into life after life as a dying family member or friend passes. Whether it’s a glimpse of heaven or an inexplicable visit from the person who is on the way there, these amazing encounters bring comfort, closure and evidence of the wonder that exists beyond.   Read More: 3 Mysterious Stories of Divinely Crossed Paths | Guideposts

Baseball is a tradition in my family. Some of my best memories growing up were the days my dad took my brother and me on the 90-minute drive to San Francisco to see the San Francisco Giants play at Candlestick Park. We saw a lot of baseball history being made, like when Willie Mays and the Giants won the National League pennant in 1962.   When I had my first child, Zach, Paw—as Zach called him—had another youngster to school in all things baseball. Unfortunately, by the time Zach was old enough to go to games Paw could no longer [More]

How many times had I stood in just this spot, waiting for the bus? And yet in all that time I’d never noticed—never really noticed—the beautiful tree that stood beside me.   I was running late for work as usual that spring morning after a good rain. Styling my hair always seemed to take longer than I anticipated. I rushed up to the neighborhood bus stop and brushed against a low-hanging branch. Water showered over me. Ugh, I thought. Somebody really should trim this tree.   As I shook off the droplets from my hair, I looked up. And up. And up. [More]

”I think I can help find your brother,” Anne said.   My friend had taken me by surprise. I gripped the phone tighter. “How?”   “From a search engine that publishes people’s names, addresses and phone numbers online.”   I hung up the phone feeling conflicted. I knew I needed to stay realistic, but a part of me felt a glimmer of hope. My life depended on tracking down my brother.   Four months earlier, I woke one morning with blinding back pain. A quick Google search indicated a kidney infection. I went in for a checkup, thinking I’d be prescribed [More]

The call from the hospital came in the morning. Our son, Chad, had been in a terrible accident, his car totaled while he drove in the fog. He had stitches in his left temple and a fractured ankle, plus a bruise on his chest from the seat belt that saved his life. My husband, Randy, and I raced to his side.   “They’re just keeping him overnight to make sure he has no internal injuries,” Randy reminded me during the two-hour drive to the hospital. “He’s in no immediate danger, thank God.”   Yes, thank you. As we got closer to the hospital, [More]

It was late. It had been a hard day for my siblings and me—one we knew was coming. But the day hadn’t gone at all how we’d planned. I tossed and turned in bed, thinking about Mom’s last minutes here on earth, dying all alone in her hospice room. More than anything, we all had wanted someone to be with her when she took her last breath.   Our 89-year-old mother had been slipping away for the past two months. We knew she didn’t have much time left, so we’d come up with a schedule to make sure one of us [More]

Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where my grandparents lived, was a different world from what we were familiar with in our California neighborhood. Their house on the outskirts of town felt like the very edge of civilization when we visited that summer I was 13 and my brother Scott was 10. We didn’t have a boring moment, exploring all we could.   We hiked and climbed across desert, canyons and washes, despite the August heat. We went “skiing” down the low hills close to my grandparents’ house, scampering to the top and sliding all the way down on our feet through the sand, [More]

Blueprints for my next construction job were spread out on the kitchen table before me, but I couldn’t focus on them. My mind was on a different kitchen table, one I hadn’t seen in decades. “What are you thinking about?” my wife, Arbutis, asked me. She could always tell when my mind was somewhere else.   “I had that same dream again last night,” I said. “Night after night, the same dream.”   “The one about your grandmother?”   “That’s the one.” In the dream, I was sitting at Mamaw’s kitchen table. I recognized it right away. Growing up, I [More]

”How long is six weeks?” eight-year-old Henry asked as I unpacked the praying mantis pod I’d ordered for our science lesson. According to the instructions, that’s how long it would take the eggs inside it to hatch.   “It’s a month from now, plus two weeks,” I said. I unwrapped the jar that would hold the pod, and handed Henry and his five-year-old brother, George, the bubble wrap to pop.   I felt a pang of guilt. I’d started working as a nanny for Henry and George after my youngest child graduated from high school. We’d been together for three [More]

 Cardinals seemed to love my backyard. I watched them cavort one sunny morning as I sat on the patio with my coffee. “Cardinals appear when angels are near,” my friend was fond of saying. She knew I believed in angels. I started each day with Psalm 91, “For he will give his angels charge over thee.” It had been a habit since grade school, and now with a daughter in law enforcement and four grandchildren in the military, the psalm was never far from my lips.   I sat quietly for a moment, meditating on my prayer, when a cardinal [More]

Are you as excited about the newly reimagined Guideposts magazine as we are? Lately I’ve been talking to a few interested media outlets about our recommitment to the readers of our 76-year-old flagship publication. At a time when so many publishers are pulling back from print, our relaunch is newsworthy. Invariably I am asked how I came to Guideposts. It’s a story I love to tell.   At the time, my life was a shambles. I was desperately trying to stay sober after years of alcohol abuse. My sponsors in the 12-step program I attended informed me that I needed to do two [More]

”We got hit yesterday,” the convoy commander announced. I was still groggy from lack of sleep, standing in the heavy morning air that unforgettable February day in 2002. I glanced at the soldiers around me, standing at attention, backs ramrod straight. I could feel the nervous energy buzzing just under the surface. “We expect to get hit again today.”   I had flown into this remote location in the arid mountains of southern Afghanistan the night before, arriving at 3 A.M. on a Chinook helicopter. I’d slept a handful of restless hours in someone else’s cot before stumbling to this [More]

As a preteen city kid, I was a little nervous that first night of our Girl Scout campout in the Appalachian Mountains. I’d never set up a tent before, for one thing. “Looks good and sturdy,” one of the troop leaders said when she inspected our work. “It’s supposed to be windy tonight.”   We had dinner around the campfire and got ready for bed. The leaders headed off to their own tent nearby. As soon as we curled up in our sleeping bags, the wind started to howl. A huge gust hit the tent and a section collapsed. We [More]

We had a long list of things we wanted to do that summer, including going to the playground across the street by ourselves. My sister was 12, my twin and I were 9—old enough not to need the watchful eye of our mother, we decided. “Please, Mami?” we begged. “Can we go?”   Our parents were protective Puerto Ricans, determined to shelter us from big-city dangers as best they could. Mami was hesitant, but she looked at the picture of Jesus that hung on our dining room wall, closed her eyes and made the sign of the cross. “Okay,” she [More]

  Kristen: I’d just drifted off to sleep when a face appeared before me. Handsome, with tan skin, dark hair, bushy eyebrows, light blue eyes and a kind smile… I woke with a start. Why am I dreaming about Kyle? I thought. I don’t even know him.   I had seen Kyle only once, briefly, a few weeks before. I was visiting my friend’s business. Kyle was also there visiting his girlfriend. I thought nothing of it. He was in a relationship. Dating was the furthest thing from my mind. So why was I dreaming about an unavailable guy I’d [More]

I was out on a walk,my eyes downcast, trying my eyes downcast, trying to sort through my thoughts. A few days ago, my husband, Russ, and I had lost our house of Russ, and I had lost our house of 28 years to California’s Camp Fire. We’d had to move into a hotel. It was all so hard to process.   An emergency phone call had alerted us early in the morning a few days prior. “Wildfire,” the robo-call repeated. “Evacuate immediately.” We sprang into action. Our next-door neighbor came over to check on us and helped Russ wrestle our [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]

Christmas Eve, 1944. My uncle Leonard was fast asleep aboard the troop ship SS Leopoldville. He was one of the more than 2,000 American soldiers aboard, all members of the Sixty-Sixth Infantry Division headed for France from England.   Suddenly, a massive explosion woke him. A German submarine had torpedoed the ship.   “You could see water coming up through the hold like a geyser,” he told us.   Uncle Leonard ran above deck in his long johns. Another ship in the convoy had already pulled up alongside the Leopoldville and was attempting to take on troops, but rough seas [More]

In 1954, when I was six years old, my family went on a road trip that has since become legend.   My parents, sister and I were driving from our house in Fayetteville, Arkansas, to Mom’s hometown in Texas. As night fell, we found ourselves on a deserted dirt road in Oklahoma, nearly out of gas. We hadn’t seen a service station in hours. It was getting late. My parents tried to hide their growing panic as the gas gauge crept toward empty, as empty as the road ahead of us.   Then a gas station appeared on the horizon. [More]