Proof The Bible Is True

A young woman is threatened on a deserted beach by a man she’s only just met. With no one else around, how could she escape unharmed?   I saw him among the sea of partyers on the beach at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Blond hair. Athletic build. Total jock. Not my type at all. I usually went for the quiet, geeky types, like me. But this guy kept glancing my way, and I had no one else to talk to. I was standing awkwardly by the bonfire. My older sister, Elizabeth, and I had snuck out of the bungalow [More]

Has God ever sent you little reminders of times in the past when He’s been faithful? I love it when He does that, and I received an email recently that brought back one of those memories.   A friend posted an emergency prayer request for her blog. It launched that day, and when it went live, the content didn’t show up like it should. To make it worse, her web designer was sick.   My friend’s email reminded me of something similar that happened to me—and what made it extra special was that her email arrived exactly four years to [More]

Growing up, I was in awe of the empty old farmhouse next door. I looked at it from the road, admiring the front porch, thinking it must have been grand years ago with fresh paint and shutters that weren’t losing louvers like loose teeth. Often, I’d get off my bike and climb the bank, up the two creaking porch steps to peek in the windows.   Once I saw a woman, dressed in a habit, walking by the old falling down outhouse in the backyard. Her veil blew in the breeze and she looked almost like a dream. I overheard [More]

“A powerful lesson on how to receive what you need from God. This can apply to healing as she needed or anything else.” Admin   I woke up with the same tormenting headache I had gone to bed with and struggled to the bathroom. I grasped the sink with both hands and reluctantly raised my pounding head to the mirror. The face reflected in the glass was a fiery red mask of tiny bumps and large acne-like sores. Hundreds of them.   The horrid rash covered my face like the Egyptian plague of boils in the Bible. The unending headache [More]

I stood outside my sister’s house that cold March morning trying to understand how everything had changed. Police cars lined the driveway. An ambulance drove away and a coroner drove up.   How was this possible? We had all been together the night before eating Sunday dinner at my mom’s house. Could it really be true that my sister was dead?   “What do you think happened?” I looked at my mom, shivering. Neither of us had grabbed a coat in our urgent dash to my sister’s house on the other side of town.   Mom shrugged and shook her [More]

I watched in horror from the stair­case as the water gushed through the front door. The smell of salt water filled the air, mist hitting me in the face. I stepped off the last step into the ankle-deep flood and gasped. The level was rising. And fast.   I had to get help. I sloshed through the flood to the living room. That’s when I saw him. Sitting in the middle of the room on top of a pillow, with­out a care in the world. A baby in a white bodysuit. He was about seven months old, chewing on his [More]

Are you all right?” I said.   The middle-aged woman next to me on my flight home had been teary-eyed when we boarded, and now she was visibly crying.   I wasn’t doing great myself. My 22-year-old son had recently died of a blood clot in his brain. I was returning home to New York after clearing out his apartment in Phoenix, Arizona, where he’d only just moved—he hadn’t even had time yet to buy me a cross for my collection. I had one from every other place he ever lived. It was our ritual.   “Yes, well—” the woman [More]

Disappointment was all too clear in my husband’s eyes when I came home from the store empty-handed. “I just didn’t come across anything special,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ll try again tomorrow after work.”   Tom nodded, but he was out of ideas too. This gift was important for both of us. The very first birthday present for his very first grandson, Vito. But I felt added pressure as Tom’s newlywed. Tom was a widower when we married. I wanted so badly to please him, impress him, to be the kind of loving, capable wife he was used to. Vito [More]

Sunday night at the laundromat. It was a huge inconvenience, especially with Christmas just a few weeks away. But my dryer was on the blink. I’d washed my clothes at home, and then transported them in plastic bags to finish the job here.   As I loaded the dryers—one for towels, a second for jeans and another for delicates—I caught sight of one of the machines below the three I was using. Spinning around together to the backdrop of the evening news were tube socks and a child’s party dress.   They don’t belong in the same dryer and I [More]

I woke up feeling sorry for myself. I was tired of hobbling around with a cast on my leg. I’d broken my ankle on a family outing in the country, and now autumn had rushed in overnight. The house was downright chilly. “Brrr,” I shivered. “This would be a good soup day.”   I craved the comfort of a homemade soup. You can’t get that from a can. But my refrigerator didn’t have much to offer, and a trip to the store seemed like too much effort. Still, all day I couldn’t get that soup idea out of my head. [More]

Another Thanksgiving without Mom, I thought, picking halfheartedly at my turkey and stuffing. This was a particularly hard holiday since Mom’s death because food and family were her hallmarks.   Mom worked as a short-order cook at the old H.L. Green drugstore in downtown San Antonio. I would grab a seat on one of the big swivel stools, and no matter how busy Mom was behind the counter she’d always stop to hug her “babies” and fix us a grilled cheese or a thick milk shake. Always there with a kiss or a kind word or some little treat to [More]

Retirement was supposed to be relaxing, but just a few months after I’d left my teaching job I found myself rushing around. It was our last day at home before my husband, Larry, and I took the three-hour trip to our summer place on Lake Roosevelt. And summer was certainly in full swing.   Today the temperature hit 100 degrees. But Larry and I had a lot to take care of before we could get going. I grabbed the keys to my Subaru Outback.   “You take the truck to run your last-minute errands,” I said. “I’m headed to the [More]

Dottie Pratchard recalls a harrowing close call she experienced while rafting down the South Fork of the American River and the prayer that changed everything for her.

I was clearing up the breakfast dishes when the phone rang. “Something’s happened to your mom,” my dad said. He was trying to keep calm, but I could hear panic in his voice. “The ambulance should be here any minute.”   A rush of cold swept through my body, as if I could feel the blood draining to my feet. “Ambulance?”   “I found her collapsed on the floor. Hurry over! I’m alone here.”   I stumbled upstairs, jerked on my shoes and ran out to the car. Luckily my family all lived close together. My parents were only a [More]

Seven o’clock. Just about time for my evening walk. I tucked my cell phone into my pocket and headed off down the road, where the summer cottages stretched out along the Juniata River in Bedford County, Pennsylvania. I walked past the cottage next to mine, past . . .   I stopped. Gladys’s cottage stood empty. It was still hard for me to believe that she wasn’t inside. We weren’t family by blood—she and her husband were great friends of my parents while I was growing up. Her daughter and I were like sisters, and Gladys was like a second [More]

They call it the most magical place on earth. What better vacation spot for us to visit than Disney World that summer of 1985? My husband and I had only been married a few months, but all signs pointed to a long and happy future for our brand-new blended family. Life felt more settled already, and I was relieved to no longer be alone.   “Let’s do Space Mountain tomorrow,” my older daughter said as she got into the sleeping couch on the opposite side of the room. Her sister was already tucked into the cot. “And Cinderella’s castle!” she [More]

Knuckles white, I gripped the sides of our ski boat. The storm had hit with almost no warning and we were being tossed about like a cork, the wind and waves threatening to capsize us.   “We’ve got to get back to the dock,” Phil yelled over the gale. We’re veteran boaters. Not easily panicked. My husband and I were fighting for our lives.   From the middle of Kaw Lake, a massive body of water in northeast Oklahoma, I looked to where we had put in that morning, hoping to enjoy the day exploring the lake’s many coves. But, [More]

My little dog, Teddy, tugged on his leash, interrupting my thoughts as we walked through my condo complex. The mornings were our time together and Teddy, a Lhasa Apo, got impatient if he didn’t have my full, undivided attention. “Sorry, Teddy,” I said with a small smile. My thoughts were all over the place this morning. The public school where I worked as a special education teacher was on break. I was thankful for the time off, but I felt completely stressed about the prospect of returning to work. My job was challenging. Too challenging sometimes. Resources were limited. Class [More]

Scotch burned my throat on the way down. Finally. I’d waited hours for my favorite bar to open up and it wasn’t even noon yet. I couldn’t deny it anymore. My drinking was out of control and I was scared out of my mind.   “How are things, Jim?” asked Betty the bartender.   I shrugged and looked around the bar. The place was dim—none of the customers wanted to see anything too clearly.   I could make out a few faces against the wood paneling: A man in a rumpled coat hunched over a tumbler of whiskey. A woman [More]

All my 84 years, I’ve believed in angels. From the time I could be read to, my mother shared the Bible stories of when they appeared. And then there was another story, a special family story, that my mother told me many times. It wasn’t nearly as old as those Bible stories, but we knew it was every bit as true. Because it was a story about my own grandmother, back in 1898.   Chicago, at the end of the nineteenth century, was not an easy place for a young couple without much money. My grandpa had a job at [More]

All six of my children had been born naturally, in the comfort of our home. I knew the natural ways to induce labor—walking, evening primrose oil, a bowl of pineapple chunks, a warm bath. I was a pro at breathing rhythms and the most comfortable delivery position. By child number seven, I knew what I was doing. But after 35 hours of labor, my home-birth doctor sent me on to the hospital.   “You need advanced medical attention,” he said. “Your labor isn’t progressing.” I didn’t know if I was more disappointed or scared.   My husband, Michael, helped me [More]

Take your problems to the Lord. That had always been my policy. But as I pulled out of my driveway one morning, my biggest worry was…simply worrying.   My concerns were nothing out of the ordinary: a big project at work, a to-do list of household repairs, trying to keep in touch with family. There was nothing I could do about any of it at the moment. I was on my way to work.   And yet no matter how many times I told myself to stop, I couldn’t stop going over and over it all in my head.   [More]

“Sing, Dari! Loud as you can!” Normally my four-year-old daughter loved to sing. Now she just stared, uncomprehending, at the nurse. I squeezed her hand for comfort. The nurse wanted her to sing so she would take deep breaths of anesthesia. I understood that, but how could I explain it to Dari?   The doctor had allowed me to be in the operating room until she was asleep, but I didn’t feel like I was being all that much help. There was so much for Dari to take in: the mask over her nose and mouth, the doctors and nurses [More]

A beautiful spring afternoon on the lake turned into a nightmare when a family’s boat drifted too close to a power dam. The powerful current pulled the boat under—and took the family with it.

I love to look through our online submissions to Guideposts‘ family of magazines. Angel lovers won’t want to miss this one, from Paul Silway of Chinchwad City, Pimpri, Maharashtra.   His phrase “homegoing angels” was new to me, and one I won’t forget. He also included a drawing, see below, “The Anticipation and Joy of Going Home.” Thank you, Paul, for this comfort to all of us:   A Vision Read More: Angels escort a loved one to heaven | Guideposts

What was that? I listened closely, all alone in my dark bedroom, but heard nothing more. Just the house settling, I told myself. I rolled over and pulled the covers up tight around me. I’d never get to sleep.   My husband, David, had died only a couple of weeks before. Without him here with me, our cozy, familiar house became something else entirely in the darkness of the night. The moon cast a ghostly light across the floor through a gap in the curtain. Shadows in the corners of the room grew long and sinister. Creaks and groans echoed [More]

Years ago my husband, Dan, was a missionary pilot in Ecuador. We lived at the foot of the Andes Mountains, and when he flew he kept in touch with me at the base camp by radio. One day I was logging his position and altitude when he suddenly announced that his Cessna had engine trouble. He needed to make an emergency landing. I looked at my map and saw nothing but steep hills dropping off into deep precipices. There was no flat space for miles around. From the sky, Dan searched for a road, a field, a meadow—any place he [More]