Proof The Bible Is True

I walk leisurely up the steep, narrow, rugged path high above a roaring river. I’ve been here before. I feel sure of it. The stately evergreen trees and the water are familiar. J, my 60-pound Border collie, lopes along beside me, my trusted companion.   I stop to take a picture of the river, looking down over a sheer rock face. The water is a brilliant turquoise blue, except for the white of the rapids, crashing violently over jagged rocks.   J goes on ahead of me. I’m not worried. She’s well trained. Smart and obedient. I hear a scampering [More]

I couldn’t sleep. Again. Negative thoughts filled my head. Again. The pain, the cold…. No cure. No relief. There’s nothing I can offer you. Six months ago, at the start of this nightmare with my leg, I would have prayed for comfort. But no more. All I wanted now was to sleep, to stop feeling so scared.   Could I pinpoint the moment God stopped listening to my prayers? Just last fall, right after the start of the school year (I’m a teacher), I rolled my left ankle. A mild sprain, I thought. No big deal. Except it was. It got worse. [More]

He was trapped under his tractor. Only God and Shannon knew where to find him.   Ted: Twenty-five years of tending our 80-acre farm. It didn’t seem possible. But I still got excited every morning to go out in the fields.   One fine June morning in 2004 I planned to mow a lot of hay. I dressed quickly, snapped my sheath knife onto my belt and tucked my ring rosary into my watch pocket.   Peggy: Breakfast was ready when Ted came into the kitchen. Pancakes with lots of butter and syrup. His favorite. Shannon crawled out from under the table [More]

Can a miracle come in the form of an old cookbook?   Doctors didn’t have much faith that 100-year-old Ruth Levy would get better. Complications from pneumonia made it unlikely she’d ever return home from the hospital.   That all changed when one of her relatives, David Vos, decided to pay her a visit. Before he left, he pulled a first-edition book off his mother’s shelf: Clémentine in the Kitchen, by Samuel Chamberlain. Something to read to Ruth in the hospital.   “I didn’t know the book,” David told The New York Times, “but it was about cooking, it looked old and [More]

Four hours on the road, crammed into an old Chevrolet with two antsy boys, a fussy two-year-old girl and one very pregnant cat named Midnight–I could use a break to stretch my legs. We all could. But try telling that to my husband, Ernie, behind the wheel.   “Midnight’s acting funny,” my son, Ken, yawned from the backseat. His brother, Jerry, stroked Midnight’s fur, trying to calm her down.   “She’s probably getting ready to have her kittens,” I said, glancing meaningfully at Ernie.   “No stops,” he said. “We’re almost there.”   Read More: Mysterious Ways: The Lifesaving Craving [More]

The gorgeous grassy field stretched for miles. Golden rays of sunshine warmed my skin, the sky a vivid blue. I sat alone. Relaxed. Serene. A man suddenly appeared from behind a tree. He was balding and a little paunchy, wearing a chestnut-colored robe.   “I want you to get started,” he said sharply, without so much as a hello. “Get started writing a book on multiple sclerosis.”   I’d had MS for three years, but I was no expert. I was a music teacher–putting a book together never entered my mind. “No way,” I said. “I work full time.”   [More]

“These are ruined,” I sighed, tossing a pile of water-damaged cassette tapes in the trash. I’d found them in a box of Dad’s stuff that I’d brought home after he died. I hated to throw them away, but a flood had waterlogged all of the flimsy cardboard boxes in my storage room.   Most of the items inside had been wrecked, and I worried about mold getting to whatever was left. What else could I do?   It had been almost 13 years since I’d lost Dad. He had passed so suddenly that I never got to say goodbye. I [More]

Winters are long and unforgiving in North Dakota. The winter of 1996 was especially brutal. It was a difficult time in my own life too. A neck injury had kept me flat in bed for nearly a year. I was finally allowed up for short periods in March. “Just in time for Easter,” my husband, Dick, said.   But I dreaded it. How could I sing “bloom in every meadow” when the snow was four feet deep? How could I summon up the joy of the season knowing I had months of excruciating physical therapy ahead?   I stood stiffly [More]

“A misfire of the number two cylinder,” the mechanic at the auto shop off California’s Highway 15 read from my truck’s diagnostic computer. So that’s what the “check engine” light meant. “You just had this vehicle serviced at our shop in San Diego?” he asked.   I nodded toward the camper trailer hitched to the back. “I always do before one of these excursions,” I told him. I was on my way to the northern Sierras for a solo camping trip far off the beaten path.   Read More: Mysterious Ways: A Not-So-False Alarm – Guideposts

Today the cross sits inside a display case in Vienna, Austria. But for many years it had a much humbler home. Sewn carefully underneath the silk lining of my dad’s wool blazer, below the left pocket.   Back in 1962, he was a teenager in southeastern Turkey about to embark on his first real journey away from home, to attend high school six hours away, in the city of Diyarbakir.   It was no ordinary cross. For centuries, the Aydins had been known as “the family of priests” in their small town. The cross was a cherished heirloom; the top [More]

Ouch! After two and a half hours on the road–a never-ending trip back home to Sarasota after visiting Mom in Savannah–my neck was killing me. With 200 miles to go, I needed a break. I stopped at the nearest rest area and massaged my shoulders.   A car pulled into the spot next to me. I glanced at the driver. Is that…Josephine? I knew her from a Christian fellowship group I participated in back home. Well into her eighties but still sharp as a pin, she possessed a bright spirit and a big, warm smile that comforted everyone in the group.   Read [More]

How often do you snap a picture with your cell phone? Every day? It’s become so easy to document our lives, we often take it for granted that these pictures are safely stored on our memory cards or in “the cloud.” But what happens if these precious records disappear?   A few months ago, I set out to backup my digital photos from over the years. Not just the ones from my current phone; I wanted to archive all my previous phones and memory cards, too. I meant business. How hard could it be?   Revisiting the past was a [More]

Dense fog shrouded the water. Beyond the dock, where a small skiff was tied up, all I could see was a milky mist. It looked like it was a day better for holing up inside the lighthouse where my wife and I were staying than going out on the water.   There was a reason, after all, why the Little River Lighthouse was here, perched on a tiny speck of land off the coast of Maine, opposite the town of Cutler. The shoreline was rugged, littered with jagged, treacherous rocks.   But I didn’t have a choice. Marilyn and I [More]

How do you know when you’ve met the love of your life? I couldn’t stop thinking about Esther. I laughed whenever we were together. My spirit soared at the sight of her. But we’d only been on a few dates! Was I really going to take her to dinner that weekend and ask her to be my girlfriend?   I knew she liked me but I was still nervous.   On my lunch break, I ran into a deli for a sandwich, pulling some bills that I had received as change earlier in the day from my wallet to pay [More]

Check engine! The warning light on the dashboard flashed at me once I started my car. I don’t have time for this, I thought, turning the car off. My youngest daughter was a teacher and I was on my way to do some volunteer work at her school in Vilonia 20 miles away. I didn’t want to be late.   I climbed out of the car and bent over to check for any liquids leaking out. Nothing. Then I looked under the hood and checked the oil. Everything looked normal. I’d just brought the car to the garage a couple days ago. What could [More]

How many times have we heard ourselves say it: What a coincidence! And sometimes that’s all it is, an outcome against which the odds were stacked. Then there are things not even coincidence can explain. Case in point–Bill and Gloria Jamieson.   After a painful divorce, Gloria Jean Slinkard felt so strongly about wanting to remain single for the rest of her life that she vowed to never even consider getting married again. Then she met Bill Jamieson.   Four days later, on Valentine’s Day, Bill proposed and Gloria said yes. Immediately. Why? Because what occurred in that brief interlude [More]

I have my own the story to share. It’s a tale my mom recounts, without fail, every Christmas. In fact, this year she’s already told the story three or four times!   It was a couple of days before Christmas in 1984 and I was one and a half years old. My sisters had just gone to bed–visions of sugarplums no doubt dancing in their heads–but I was still awake and sitting in my mom’s lap. My dad plopped down next to the Christmas tree, rearranging all the pretty presents before Santa’s big arrival.   “And what do you want [More]

There’s a reason I don’t play the lottery or enter contests. I know I’ll never win. Even the one time I did–I collected ten dollars in a magazine sweepstakes–it didn’t make up for the hundred dollars in magazine gift subscriptions I’d bought over the years. So when the cashier at the grocery store handed me a scratch-off prize card around Thanksgiving, I didn’t want to take it.   “It’s free with your grocery purchase,” the cashier said. Okay, if I don’t need to gamble any money away…  Still, I wasn’t sure there wasn’t some catch. After fishing for a quarter from my [More]

Huckleberry Hound’s lazy drawl drifted into my kitchen that Saturday morning in the fall of 1959. His antics would keep my two young children occupied while I cooked some oatmeal for breakfast. The television was a poor babysitter, but what other option did I have?   My husband had left us. We got no support from him, financial or otherwise. We’d lost everything we owned in a fire and had to start over from scratch. There wasn’t much assistance for single mothers back then, so the free entertainment the television offered was a big help.   I opened the cupboard [More]

I straightened my sequined headpiece and wings, and stepped onto the stage at Trump Marina in Atlantic City. I was “Angel,” a lead soprano in Cirque Dreams Holidaze, a national holiday production. It was a huge role, one I was grateful for.   But I couldn’t help but worry. Would this finally be my big break? Or just another dead end?   Performing had always come naturally to me. As a toddler I danced and sang around the house, putting on variety shows for my parents, older sister and younger brother. When I was five my parents took us all to [More]

One-hundred-ninety-three boxes of cereal filled up the storage room of the Canby Center, the Christian community outreach organization and food pantry where my husband serves as director and I volunteer. Cheerios, Corn Flakes, Wheaties, Raisin Bran, Life, Honey Bunches of Oats, every cereal you could think of.   They’d arrived Monday morning by truck, brought to us by the cheerful manager of the Burgerville franchise nearby. “Our cereal box drive was a great success,” he declared. He’d offered a free milkshake to anyone who participated.   My husband thanked him for the generous donation, but as nice as it was, I worried it [More]

“Get in the car!” the hooded figure yelled. He jammed the barrel of his gun into Elizabeth Metzler’s side.   The 30-year-old teacher from Colorado Springs had stopped by Target that evening to pick up toothpaste and shampoo. She was getting into her car when two hooded men in ski masks emerged from the shadows. She caught a glimpse of the gun in the silver moonlight. It looked cold and terrifying.   Read More: A Token of Her Commitment to God – Guideposts

“The road is impassable,” the fire chief warned us. “You’ll never make it.” We’d pulled up next to his firefighting team in a snow of ashes, staring at Highway 39, the only route into the San Gabriel Canyon of Angeles National Forest, 30 miles northeast of L.A. Thick smoke and bright orange flames roared from the trees beyond. My partner, John, and I, deputies for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, exchanged glances. “We’ve got no choice,” I muttered. I wheeled our SUV around the roadblock, into the jaws of the fiery beast. The firefighters had their job to do. We [More]

A strip of glossy paper, torn from yet another magazine, dangled from our little black cocker spaniel’s clenched teeth. I knelt down to tug the soggy, rectangular scrap from his mouth. “Come on, boy.” He relaxed his jaw and looked up with innocent eyes. I glared at him, frustrated. Now? Why are you doing this now? Nothing, it seemed, could stop Leaf’s new bad habit. And he’d always been such a good dog! I held the slimy slip he’d dropped into my hand up to the light, reading the disjointed words and numbers printed on it as if they held some [More]

The engine revved, but our jeep’s wheels spun futilely in the sand. Stuck! It was another hot night in the fall of 1945, on the Pacific island of Saipan, and my corporal had taken me out on patrol duty. Sometimes servicemembers would sneak a vehicle off base to cruise around the island, then ditch the vehicle when they were though. It was our job to bring those vehicles back. We’d noticed a set of tire tracks trailing off towards the beach and pulled off the main road to investigate. Now, the jeep refused to budge from its place, lodged in the sand. [More]

Brr. I hugged the warm Crockpot I was carrying as I walked up to the building site. We’re hardy folk here in Wisconsin, but that fall day was beyond brisk. The women in my church group were bringing lunch to some Habitat for Humanity volunteers building a house in a working-class neighborhood. We’d made brownies, sandwiches and, most important, a huge batch of chili. Nearing the site, I wondered if chili would be enough to warm the bellies of the hungry crew. Except…there was no activity. No hammering. No saws buzzing. No drills whirring. No one working inside or out. Only [More]

Are we going to have tons of fun today?” I asked my four-year-old granddaughter as we drove to my house. “Yeah!” she shouted from the backseat. She and I always had fun. She was three months old when my son and daughter-in-law adopted her. In the four years since, we’d spent a lot of time together. Watering the garden, reading books, feeding her daddy’s horse—anything was fun as long as we were together. “How about some music?” I asked. I popped in a Christmas CD. It was almost December, after all. “Oh come, all ye faithful…” came from the car [More]