Proof The Bible Is True

We considered our neighborhood safe. Our nine-year-old son Adam often rode his bike with friends, but our six-year-old daughter Tara stayed close to our home.During our years spent attending seminary, we lived in low-income housing in a North Texas neighborhood, without any trees or much grass in the yards. Everyone had an almost identical, small house, with similar-colored bricks and roofing—tract housing at its best—and that’s all we could afford.Late one summer afternoon, Adam failed to show up for our evening meal. When he didn’t respond to his dad’s calls to come home, I asked Tara, “Will you go find [More]

I lay awake and kept telling myself to get up when car wheels squealed to an abrupt halt. I bolted from my bed as I heard people screaming, “Call an ambulance.” Stumbling to the phone, I dialed the emergency number. The operator told me help was on the way.As I made my way downstairs, it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard the bus go by, the one my husband Chris took each morning to his office in the city.Chris would be the first one to run in and call an ambulance, I thought. The bus stop was right on [More]

A Point of Grace concert was a delightful way to end a fun day at the Iowa State Fair. My sister Connie and I, along with our ten-year-old daughters, made the three-hour trip early that morning so we could enjoy a full day of attractions, rides, fried food and gazing at the famous cow sculpture made of butter. The hot, sunny weather, typical for Iowa in August, made our day even better. We left the fair tired but content at about eleven that night. It was sprinkling when we left and soon rain fell steadily. Heavy rains developed into a [More]

The eight of us slipped quietly as we could through the rolling German countryside. We were the Intelligence and Reconnaissance Unit, the eyes and ears of the Army Infantry, one of the storied divisions that battled Hitler’s army across northern Europe. The fighting had grown ever more fierce in October 1944, as we crossed the Luxembourg border into Germany. On this night, our job was to scout the German lines and report back on how many troops they had, how many tanks, and the number and size of their big guns. But something went wrong. The Germans spotted us as [More]

Finally, the storm clouds lifted! It had rained for nearly two weeks straight, our European vacation better suited for ducks than my two youngest children and me. Still, we’d had a wonderful stay with my elderly cousin, Tante Helga. She’d lived her whole life in Thumersbach, a tiny village of about 900 people, and knew the mountains like the back of her hand. A retired obstetrician, she was a friend to everyone in the community.Her villa, on the shore of a lake high up in the Austrian Alps, was like a scene from a storybook. It was magical. We’d been [More]

Usually I’m not an early riser, but on our beach vacation in Fort Lauderdale I was up with the sun. The flash of dawn on the water and peaceful rhythm of the waves against the shore always made me feel close to God. I pulled on my clothes, anxious to get outside and walk in the sand. Life had seemed hard lately. My computer consulting business kept me more busy than I sometimes wanted to be, not to mention managing the office and doing all of the bookkeeping for my husband Chuck’s oil business. And then there were our teenage [More]

My husband found me sitting in a puddle of half a dozen broken eggs on the kitchen floor. “What happened?” he asked. “I dropped them,” I said, sobbing. “Can’t you see?” Todd threw up his hands. He’d tried to understand me, but he couldn’t. Six months pregnant, I overreacted to everything, sometimes bursting into tears for no apparent reason. Todd and I had been high school sweethearts, and we were happy about our first baby, but we were only 20 years old. It was all too new and overwhelming. We both had full-time jobs, and Todd often worked late, so [More]

Nick Leibold: Just after 11 a.m. and already the sun was blistering hot in Northern Iowa. Sweat ran down my back as I finished mowing a wide strip of grass between endless rows of corn—an area with drainage too poor for crops. Not that we’d seen rain lately. The ground was dry and dusty, coating everything with a film of dirt. Thankfully I was nearly done, just in time for lunch with my wife, Kendra. Normally I’d be inside an air-conditioned cab, but for small jobs I like driving my dad’s 1963 John Deere tractor, pulling a mower behind me. [More]

The hospital delivery room was cold, so cold. Or maybe it was just me. I shivered from head to toe. I hadn’t felt that way when delivering my first three children, but everything about this pregnancy was different. My due date had come and gone, with several bouts of false labor. The doctor finally decided to give me a hormone to speed up the birth process. It seemed like the IV drip the nurse had put in my arm was pumping ice water into my veins. Jim, my husband, stood by my side in his mask and hospital scrubs, holding [More]

There’s nothing like riding the team bus home after a big win over your rival high school. I don’t think I ever felt closer to my teammates. I wished the night would go on forever. But it was late and up ahead was our high school parking lot where our parents were waiting to drive us home. Quickly, we said our good-byes and headed toward our cars. I searched the dimly lit parking lot for Mom’s blue car. It wasn’t anywhere. Halloween was a few days away and an eerie wind blew leaves across the lot. Featured Product Angels on [More]

“Mom, I lost my retainer!” my son, Joey, said to me over the phone one afternoon. “Calm down,” I told him, although I was really talking to myself. “I’ll leave work early and come by the school. We’ll find it.” I’d do anything not to have to replace the expensive device. “I took it out to eat lunch and set it on my tray,” Joey said when I got to the school. “I forgot it was there when I dumped my tray into the trash can.” By the time Joey realized what he’d done, the whole school had been through [More]

t was Sunday evening. The sun was setting on a choppy, cool day on Florida’s Indian River. I’d skippered a Coast Guard Auxiliary vessel for eight years. My crew and I were civilian volunteers, but the US Coast Guard relied on us to keep the folks who were fishing or sailing these waters safe. Patrolling this river never felt like work to me. Besides being outside on the water, I liked knowing I was watching out for anyone who might need help. So far I’d rescued a dozen or so people in trouble. My mother might have said I acted [More]

It was just a ringing telephone, but it filled me with dread. As I reached out to answer it, I remembered the phone call I’d received only weeks before. The phone call from the hospital telling me my daughter Ashley had been in a terrible car accident. Whatever this call was about, it couldn’t hurt me. The worst had already happened. Ashley was dead. Back in my kitchen, I lifted the phone off the hook. “Hi, Karen. Something just happened down at Roy’s Market.” Kim was a good friend of mine. Roy’s Market was the store down the road, the [More]

Swinging on my family’s old metal swing set was one of my favorite things to do. I loved the feeling of soaring over the earth with the cool wind in my hair. One afternoon, my sister and I were so busy swinging we didn’t notice the sky had darkened.“Girls, come inside!” my mother yelled from the front porch. We jump off the swing set and dashed toward safety.Kay was faster.I followed her underneath the 15-foot long wire that connected our TV antenna to the house. The antenna sat on top of an old tree trunk. Read More  Grounded by a [More]

Back when we were a young couple, my husband, Bill, and I shared a bedroom with our seven-month-old baby, Steve, who slept in a crib near our full-sized bed. One night, as my family lay sleeping, I sensed someone in the room with us. Read More  Blue Angel at Her Baby’s Bedside – Guideposts.

It was a short drive home from the day care center, so my daughter-in-law let my three-year-old grandson, Isaiah, ride in the front seat. The car went off the road and flipped over before coming to a rest on its wheels. My daughter-in-law looked for Isaiah. The seat beside her was empty. Isaiah was sitting in the backseat—completely unharmed! He crawled into his mother’s lap to wait for help. Read More  Secure in Arms of Angels – Guideposts.

Most people who looked at Mine-O-Mine would only see a worn red blanket. But to my four-year-old son, Isaiah, that blanket meant the world. Now it was lost. “We had it at the soccer game this evening,” I said. I hoped that we hadn’t left the blanket at the field. “Have you checked the van?” I asked my husband, Lonny. “I even checked under the seats,” he said. Mine-O-Mine was gone. “I won’t be able to sleep without him,” Isaiah whispered. Although Lonny had searched the entire van, I felt compelled to check again. Lord, I asked, Mine-O-Mine is so [More]

“Mommy, I’m hungry,” three-year-old Ashley said. She’d been a trooper all day, squirming in her car seat while I chased down job leads. I wished I had something to show for it. Now I had to get home to figure out dinner for her and the three boys. What on earth am I going to feed them? I thought as I drove to our mobile home lot. I’d come as a single mom to Canyon Lake, in the Texas Hill Country, where trailer parks offered affordable living. Problem was, I couldn’t find work. I told myself to stay confident, to [More]

Just after midnight my husband, Michael, and I were woken by the ringing phone. Michael spoke to someone a few seconds, hung up and turned to me with a sleepy smile. “It’s one of the guys at work,” he said. “He says we should go out and look at the northern lights.” We had been living in Alaska for over a year and still hadn’t seen the famous aurora borealis. The folks at the Forest Service didn’t want us to sleep through it. What a relief to get a phone call with good news, I thought as I pulled on [More]

The night was serene above the clouds, and I marveled at the sensation of flying. Just like angels, I thought, imagining them all around us. I was with my friend David Wright, who was piloting a Beechcraft Bonanza back to our local airport in Fort Worth from Oklahoma, where we’d taken our pastor and his wife. We’d had a prayer service before we left Texas, and people told us they’d linger at the church for a while to pray some more. “Bad weather reports,” they’d said. Although I was grateful for their prayers, there seemed no cause for alarm. Our [More]

My husband and daughter had always been especially close. Ten-year-old Becky was her daddy’s little helper, running after Don if he went to the store or handing him tools as he fixed a leaky faucet. I had back problems and when the three of us were out walking, I’d often fall behind; Don and Becky would turn around, coaxing me to catch up. When Don started cleaning houses for extra money, he often took Becky along for company. The quiet of the house without them got to me, but it was good knowing they were together—almost like worrying about one [More]

Let me say at the outset that Carl is getting professional help at a domestic-violence treatment center. Since I do not want to hurt his chances of recovery, I have changed names and locations to camouflage his identity. Otherwise I am putting down exactly what happened on the night of May 10, 1994. Carl Broderick and his wife, Marie, were my landlords and next-door neighbors just outside Lubbock, Texas. We shared a driveway, but that’s about all we had in common. I drove a 1987 Plymouth Voyager; Carl drove a brand-new Bronco and his wife a silver Cadillac. Their house [More]

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I would have given anything to take them back. I looked at that youngster beside me in the car, pixie face eager beneath her baseball cap. Knowing just how much 10-year-old Erin missed her dad, wanting to do something special for her, I’d invited her to go with me that afternoon to watch the Giants play the Chicago Cubs at Candlestick Park. I’d never seen a kid so excited. We’d been driving across the Bay Bridge when she suddenly piped up, “Maybe we’ll catch a foul ball!” And like an [More]

In my studio on New York City’s Upper West Side, I train professional opera, cabaret and Broadway singers right alongside talented amateurs from every occupation you could imagine. When I look out of my eighth-floor window onto Broadway, I know Frank Sinatra was right: If you can make it here… Competition is fierce. But often it’s that competition that forges strong bonds between people. All different types of people. And it seems that every type of person has come through my studio. One February afternoon about three years ago, I received my most unexpected visitor ever. I was giving a [More]

My husband found me sitting in a puddle of half a dozen broken eggs on the kitchen floor. “What happened?” he asked. “I dropped them,” I said, sobbing. “Can’t you see?” Todd threw up his hands. He’d tried to understand me, but he couldn’t. Six months pregnant, I overreacted to everything, sometimes bursting into tears for no apparent reason. Todd and I had been high school sweethearts, and we were happy about our first baby, but we were only 20 years old. It was all too new and overwhelming. We both had full-time jobs, and Todd often worked late, so [More]

The last thing I wanted to do was go out for lunch. Even with my best friends. Since my husband and I had separated three months before I didn’t really want to see anyone. “Come on,” my friend Kristin urged when she called to invite me. “It’ll do you good to get out and have a few laughs.” I couldn’t imagine ever laughing again, not the way I was feeling. But I couldn’t put my friends off any longer. I showed up at the restaurant, knowing I wouldn’t be very good company. Everyone looked so sunny and happy, I felt [More]

Banks have never been friendly places in my view. What did an institution built around money care about someone like me, who was struggling to make ends meet? That September day I went in to deposit my meager check, I got in line feeling insignificant. It wasn’t just the bank. So many things lately had conspired to make me feel unimportant. I’d struggled for months to find a steady job with no luck. I lived in constant fear of losing my house to foreclosure. Even the weather seemed to be trying to tell me how little I mattered. In August [More]