Proof The Bible Is True

The dinner tray sat beside my hospital bed untouched, the food getting colder by the minute. I’d been in this room at Methodist Hospital in Minneapolis for 10 days now, recovering from a broken pelvis and fractured ribs after an auto accident. The pain that permeated my body was constant and intense. At times I felt as if I couldn’t breathe, let alone eat. At 18, my life seemed over. Three months earlier, I’d lost my father to cancer. Now this. The world felt like a dark and empty place. Eating wasn’t going to change anything, and the mere sight [More]

Sofa pillows arranged around me for comfortable viewing, I tucked the throw around my legs and picked up the remote for the TV. A good movie at the end of the day could give me a lift. But when I hit the power button, all I got was a bright pink screen. What now? I waited, pressed some buttons. Wavy images appeared and disappeared. Dejected, I turned off the TV and answered the phone with a tired hello.   “Hi Mom, what’s going on?” my daughter Amanda asked.   “Believe it or not, my TV just broke.”   “Are you [More]

Flipping up the hood of my parka, I took a deep breath before stepping out into the icy March wind. The day was bleak, the sky a dour gray. Not ideal conditions for a stroll, but I needed some air—even if it was freezing.   The past few days I’d been in a bad place—a feeling I couldn’t seem to shake. But I was determined to walk it off. I planned to take my usual route, a five-mile loop around my neighborhood, then back home. But with each step, my thoughts raced.   It all started when I learned that [More]

Nana my beloved grandmother, was in the hospital with bone cancer, and I’d picked up my mom so we could spend the afternoon with Nana together. It was hard to imagine that her days on earth were dwindling. She’d lived with such exuberance.   ”I still remember those doctors who said she’d die young from a weak heart,” Mom said on the way over.   “She outlived all of them,” I said. “That weak heart never stopped her.”   Read More: A Heaven-Sent Princess Visited His Grandmother | Guideposts

At Mysterious Ways, we receive many submissions with accounts of miracles on the road. They all communicate the sense that even during the most ordinary of tasks, such as driving home from work or church, we can experience heavenly guidance. Here are three stories that show we’re never alone behind the wheel.   Read More: 3 Stories of Divine Intervention On the Road | Guideposts

I stepped out of the federal prison in South Dakota after a decade behind bars and breathed a sigh of relief. I’d served my time. But I wasn’t just free. I was a new man. Honestly, I doubted anyone who knew me before would recognize me. I hardly recognized me.   My home life hadn’t been great growing up. My dad died in a car accident when I was just 10. He’d been abusive and violent. An alcoholic. When I was 16, my mother remarried. Another alcoholic. My stepfather handed me my first beer at 18. “Drink up,” he said. [More]

December 1974. The road ahead was dark and winding, lined by pine trees. I was 18, on my way home to Wisconsin for the holidays after my first semester at college in Minnesota. Legally I was an adult. Yet thinking of the future I felt like a lost child. Did God have a plan for me?   Six months earlier, in a tiny hospital chapel, I’d felt his presence in a way I never had before. A feeling that didn’t go away. But in a busy world of classes, friends, and a career path to figure out, sometimes it was [More]

It was time to start my afternoon run on the school bus. I drove up to the elementary school, parked and opened the doors.   Usually I enjoyed greeting the kids as they climbed aboard. Today I kept my gaze fixed straight ahead. I’d just come from a difficult family counseling session with my oldest son, Shayn. I felt pulverized. Hopeless. How did we ever get here? I thought. Shayn was intelligent, tall, with a softness around his eyes. He’d been a pleasure to raise, active in the Boy Scouts and church. The two of us were close.   Then [More]

It’s one of the oldest pranks in the book: the “ding dong ditch.” The prankster rings the victim’s doorbell, then quickly runs away or hides before the resident answers. The unsuspecting victim drops what they’re doing to answer the door, only to find that no one’s there.   Sharon Mardis, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, a widow and mother of four, told ABC News that she suspected she’d been a victim of the prank when she responded to her ringing doorbell at 1:00 a.m.   “My doorbell started ringing, and I came to the door,” Sharon told ABC News. “There was [More]

I had picked a beautiful day to visit my daughter Amie, her husband, and my three grandchildren, five-year-old Bailey, three-year-old Gavin and baby Carson.   Their dad was at work, but the sun was shining, and the kids, Amie and I spent the morning out on the back deck.   “Nice day to be out,” Amie’s neighbor said, popping over from doing some yard work. Indeed it was gorgeous outside.   But the kids got tired and we went inside the house. “Mind babysitting while I run to the grocery store?” Amie asked me. Of course I didn’t!   Read [More]

Ten years ago, while trying to get to sleep one night, Marilyn Fowler heard a voice. It was the voice of her late mother, Charlotte. The voice told Marilyn to write the story of their family, which was first torn apart by the Great Depression and then went through periods of poverty and even homelessness.   “All the memories kept coming back to me,” Marilyn told the paper. “I rolled out of bed and I said, ‘Mom, I’ll write your story, now leave me alone.’”   Marilyn began writing about her family’s troubled history and her own tumultuous life, which [More]

I settled down on the living room couch, cradling my three-week-old daughter, Debbie, in my arms. One look at her sweet, innocent face and my heart swelled with thankfulness. I thought back to the doctor’s words to my husband, John, and me just 14 months before she was born: “I’m sorry to tell you, but you have about a one-in-a-million chance of conceiving a child,” he’d said. Debbie was truly our miracle baby.   I strapped Debbie in her infant seat and placed her next to John on the couch. She smiled as her bright eyes followed the patterns of [More]

“Hand me that feed bag,” Grandpa hollered from the cattle trough.   I reached into the bed of our pickup and lifted out the heavy burlap bag. There was no mistaking Pa’s voice. Even at his age, 75, it was commanding.   Any other Friday afternoon, I would have been in school. But the flu was going around real bad that week, and in our small town, it knocked out enough people to give us a day off. A day off for most kids, anyway.   I might have been hanging out watching TV or going fishing with my friends. [More]

I’m a CSI, a crime-scene investigator, for Los Angeles County and it’s a 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year job. Even on Christmas Eve. I went to bed that night hoping to sleep until morning, when my three daughters would rush in, giddy and impatient to open their gifts. But at midnight the phone rang. “We need you at a crime scene,” the dispatcher said.   There had been a home burglary in a poor area of the city. “It can’t wait until the morning,” the deputy at the scene told me when I called for details. “You’ll understand when you get here.”   [More]

Round and round the baggage carousel turned, swarmed by the passengers from our flight to Tampa, all anxiously awaiting their luggage. My husband, Doug, leaned in and focused on the ramp where suitcases thumped and banged onto the conveyor belt.   The bright red roller belonging to our son’s fiancée tumbled out, but Doug couldn’t grab it as it whizzed past. Several more bags passed before he managed to wrestle his own off the belt and dragged it over. That’s when we all noticed… the zipper of the front pocket was open. Doug ran his hand inside.   “Chris’s hat [More]

Christmas just isn’t Christmas without sharing a giant chocolate Hershey bar with Mom, I thought wistfully, looking at the display of bars on sale at the grocery store one cold December day.   It’s not your usual holiday tradition, but it was for me. I’m not sure how it started, but every year for as long as I could remember, as a way to welcome in the holiday, Mom and I would run to the store to buy a giant milk chocolate Hershey bar. We’d keep it in the refrigerator at home and would break off little pieces in the [More]

The Christmas party had been wonderful. It was great to be among friends on Christmas Eve, sipping eggnog and singing carols. I was sorry it had to end. Finally, at a little past one in the morning, I headed home. I was almost at the freeway exit when I saw the sign:  Closed For Night Construction/Please Take Alternate Route   Alternate route? What alternate route? The 55 Freeway was the only way I knew back home, and there weren’t any detour signs. The next exit was coming up fast. Maybe this will put me on the right road, I thought, turning off. [More]

Every December our Candlewood Lions Club throws a Christmas party at a local firehouse for the special needs children of Green Chimneys, a residential school. It’s a blast!   I dress like an elf and help Santa pass out presents to the kids. There’s also a magician, a lunch buffet, even a tour of the firehouse. But driving there last year, I was in a panic. We had exactly 40 presents to give–enough for the children we usually expected. Not enough for the 60 we’d just heard would be coming. Too bad the real Santa Claus wasn’t around.   Read [More]

“Wonderful story of how God step by step worked out His plan for her life. He will do the same for anyone if we let Him.”  Admin   I looked around the office, waiting to audition. Of all the TV shows to be called for! Bathroom Renovations on the DIY Network. I was an actor, a trained opera singer, a musician. By now I’d played myriad roles in my career: from commercials, voice-overs, films, plays, operas, cruise ship entertainment…but no reality television. The producers were looking for a host, someone who could show people how to get it all done: [More]

About 15 years ago, my husband, our two boys and I were heading home from a weeklong vacation to Cocoa Beach and Disney World. It was a long drive from Florida back to where we live in Ohio. On I-75, heading north, we saw signs advertising fruit stands at nearly every exit. I wanted to get oranges to take home, so I told my husband to stop at the next exit to get some. But we had a lot of driving ahead of us, so he wanted to continue on the road for a while. No matter, there were plenty [More]

This week’s “ripped from the headlines” Mysterious Ways story comes from Grand Haven, Michigan.   Larry Ritsema was out for an early morning jog around his neighborhood Memorial Day weekend. On a quiet, shady street, he began to feel faint. Suddenly, everything went black. Larry collapsed to the asphalt.   Less than a minute later, Tom Alguire zipped past on his bicycle. He caught sight of the figure crumpled next to the curb, squeezed the hand brakes and turned to get a closer look. Tom hopped off his bike and ran over. He recognized Larry immediately.   Tom had been [More]

That night I left the newspaper office where I work and headed to the site of two dilapidated houses that stood waiting for our volunteer fire department to set them ablaze. I planned to write a story about a training exercise called a “controlled burn,” where firefighters practice battling a fire. I got to the site just in time.   One of the firefighters struck a match and lit some kindling. The first house, the smaller one, caught fire immediately. Flames licked at the night sky. The fire raged with such fury that the house was engulfed within minutes.   [More]

James Pribram was in Canada on a business trip. A pro surfer, he earns his living as a company ambassador for various youth-and-sports-oriented companies, and also spends time teaching schoolchildren to take good care of the ocean environment. The ocean is his church, he’s fond of saying. He had three days left before he was due to fly home to California.   But something was tugging at him. He couldn’t escape a nagging feeling that he had to be at home—it couldn’t wait three days. His mother had recently fallen and suffered an injury, and although it wasn’t life-threatening, maybe [More]

Victor Giesbrecht, 61, and his wife, Ann, from Winnipeg, Canada, were driving last Saturday night on Interstate 94 in Wisconsin when they spotted two women standing outside their car on the side of the road. While other cars passed by, Victor pulled over, asking how he could help.   The car had a flat tire, the women said. They were struggling to remove it and put on the spare. Victor got out of his truck, rolled up his sleeves and got to work. Within minutes, he had the tire on. Grateful, the women shook Victor’s hand and thanked him.   [More]

California couple Esther and Nelson Nieves were heartbroken. Their 15-year-old Beagle mix, Dude, had been brutally killed by an escaped pit bull outside the home they shared with their relatives.   Ever since he was a 4-week-old puppy, Dude had been by Nelson’s side, and recently, after Nelson retired, the dog had come with him everywhere. Now Dude was gone.   According to an article in the Manteca Bulletin, Nelson’s nephew, Delfino, was worried about his uncle. Two days after the tragic event, he spoke to his father, wondering how he could help lift his uncle out of his depression. [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]