Proof The Bible Is True

The NY Daily News had a terrific article last week, a great example of how God can bring together two people who need each other, in the most amazing of ways.   Calvary Hospital hospice nurse Wanda Rodriguez never knew her father. He left when she was just a baby. Her mother raised her and her older sister Gina alone in the Bronx borough of New York City. Over the years, Wanda always wondered about her father, despaired that there wasn’t any one she could call dad. Especially now that she was a parent herself, and her kids asked about [More]

My family and I live on St. John, the smallest of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Our little house sits at the tip of a rugged, secluded cove a few yards from the blue Caribbean.   I spent my days happily building my boat. One day, I broke the blade on my saber saw and had to make the trip into town to fetch a replacement. That’s when I discovered my old Volkswagen bus had a flat.   I rummaged in the back for the tire iron, an old-fashioned lug wrench with a special socket that was an exact fit for [More]

“Grandma, Grandma, tell us a story!” Four darling children sat by my feet, looking up at me expectantly.   Suddenly, we were interrupted by clapping. “Terrific,” the director said, stepping up to the stage from the chapel aisle. “Except, could you kids face the audience a bit more?”   The kids shifted to face the empty pews, which would be filled in a few days for the church play. “Perfect,” the director said. “Now, Grandma, read to your grandchildren.” A pang of sadness hit me. If only I could read to my real grandchild!   I had a granddaughter, but [More]

Just six of us, with me as pastor, were trying to revive a 139-year-old Congregational church. People scoffed. No one had worshiped there for 22 years, they said, and besides, it was summer, when even established churches had low attendance. Where would the people come from?   Even so, getting ready for our first service, we set out 80 folding chairs. After we asked God to bless our efforts, Shirley Krohn said, “Remember the Bible story where the poor widow asks the prophet Elisha for help?”   Read More: A Full Church Once Again – Guideposts

I’ve always loved tomatoes. Every year on my birthday, my dad would tell me how my mother had been canning tomatoes right before she went into labor. “That’s the reason you love them so much,” he’d say. At the end of the story, he’d hand me a bag of tomatoes, knotted at the top in a bow. It was our special tradition.   Not this year, though. Just two months before my birthday, Dad passed away. I told my husband that I didn’t even want to see a tomato. Unless they came from Dad, it just wouldn’t be the same. [More]

A dream brought Haitian orphans a hero. A late dinner saved their lives. And those incredible stories show evidence of God’s love, even in time of disaster.   Even people of deep faith sometimes question where God is in times of disaster, like when a powerful earthquake devastated the island nation of Haiti back in January 2010. For months, Newark Star-Ledger columnist Bob Braun reported the story of an orphanage in the Haitian town of La Plaine, just outside the country’s hard-hit capital of Port-Au-Prince. And the story he uncovered just may provide an answer.   Read More: A Miracle In Haiti – Guideposts

The network news images of the storm’s damage troubled me: catastrophic flooding, crowds desperately seeking shelter.   It was just days after Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast, and I hadn’t heard from my great-aunt Iva and great-uncle Bob, who lived in River Ridge, a New Orleans suburb. They were both in their 80s and not in great health.   I called and called their home, but only got the same monotone voice over and over: “We’re sorry. The area you are calling is out of service.”   I searched the internet. Maybe I could find some news about [More]

When I was growing up, I always liked to hear my father tell the story of a strange premonition he’d had as a young missionary in China.   Dad’s superior, a Mr. Sinton, had just left Luchou for an extended journey to outlying missions, when Dad was overwhelmed with the feeling that Mr. Sinton was in mortal danger.   Every night Dad prayed for his safety. When Mr. Sinton returned, he told about having retired one night in a guesthouse where a tiny charcoal brazier burned. Later that evening Mr. Sinton had heard a loud pounding. Getting up, he went [More]

Although I had endured intense pain in my leg for months, I’d put off going to the doctor. I was terrified he’d tell me I needed an operation.   “I can’t believe you waited so long,” he chided me when I finally went. “Your leg is bothering you because a disk in your back is pressing on a nerve ending. We’ll schedule surgery for next week.”   Even after he explained every detail of the procedure to my husband, Dave, and me, I was still a nervous wreck. I prayed for comfort all the way into the operating room, until [More]

That spring, for the first time in years, Mother couldn’t go mushrooming. After surgery, she was recuperating at our home. No scurrying off to the moist Hoosier woodlands. No hunting for morels, the rare cone-shaped mushrooms that grow for a short time every spring.   For Mother that was a real hardship; mushrooming was her gift. Every year we kids would go into the woods with her; we’d fan out in different directions, searching in proven morel breeding grounds such as patches of mayapple, rotting stumps and fallen elm trees. But it was always Mother who would call out suddenly, [More]

I was excited to interview for a position at a nearby cancer center as part of my graduate program in social work. But my academic advisor had other plans. She sent me to an interview at a major medical center downtown—an hour-and-a-half away! How would I have enough time for my family and classes with a commute that long? It seemed pointless to go.   “Just check it out,” she said. So I braved the traffic—which was worse than I expected—parked and waited in the lobby.   My mind wandered to the only time I’d ever been to that hospital. [More]

I worried about the steps leading down to the basement of our new house until my husband put a latch high on the door where Ben, nearly two, couldn’t reach.   One afternoon, I busied myself with chores while Ben napped. Hurrying downstairs to the basement, I grabbed some meat out of the freezer chest. When I put my hand on the banister to go back up, I saw Ben standing at the top.   “Wait, Ben,” I said quickly. “Mommy’s coming.” God, keep him safe till I get to him. Before I even moved, Ben took an unsteady step forward [More]

One night, many years ago, I tucked my 21-month-old daughter Julie into her crib, kissed her on the forehead and went to the living room to begin my usual routine: picking up the scattered toys from the day’s play. I always put Julie’s favorite toys in her bedroom closet, keeping one of the sliding doors open so she could see her beloved dolly, “Mrs. Beasley” when she woke up.   Colored blocks, storybooks, dolls, I put them all in a box and quietly placed it in her closet. But as I turned to creep back out, something stopped me. Close the [More]

I felt a pang of sadness watching the farms and fields of Kansas shrink outside my window as the plane rose into the sky.   My visit to my hometown of Wichita from college in San Diego had been painfully short.   My cousin had passed away, and the cheapest flight I could get to attend his funeral routed me through Minneapolis, Detroit and Memphis—22 hours of travel for only 13 short hours at home.   Just enough time to pay my respects and see my family, but not enough to even call any of my friends, let alone see [More]

I couldn’t sleep. I stared ahead into the darkness of the hospital room, lit dimly by the machines monitoring my vital signs. Earlier the IV in my arm had infiltrated, and the doctors stuck me three times to start a new one. I’d had blood drawn three times too. My pain medication was too weak to soothe me. “God,” I spoke aloud, “I’m tired. I can’t do this hospital stuff anymore.” After 46 hospitalizations in 19 years, I was ready to give up.   I have a rare illness called acute intermittent porphyria, a sister disease of multiple sclerosis and [More]

I meant to set the alarm for dawn that third night in Israel with my church group. I wanted to get up with the sun and say my prayers like I did at home. I especially wanted to pray while the sun rose over the Sea of Galilee, the very sea where Jesus sailed, and take a snapshot. I put my camera on the nightstand, then rested my eyes. Only for a second, I promised myself, then I’ll set the alarm.   The next thing I knew sunlight filled my room. It was morning! How could I have let this happen? I [More]

In 1959 my husband and I were dismayed when our mission board announced it was sending us to Taiwan by freighter, a long voyage that would seem even longer with our two children: Nancy, three, and Sammy, still in diapers.   Surely it would be easier to fly, we said. But we were told that the board had to send another couple with children, the Howards, to the Philippines via the freighter. Since children were not allowed as passengers without a doctor onboard, we were to go because my husband, Sam, is a plastic surgeon.   Read More: The Perfect [More]

Mrs. Webb was blind and frail and her health had been declining for many months. She and her husband lived in the shadow of our church, Headland First Baptist.   On New Year’s Eve she went to bed early as usual while Mr. Webb watched TV. Then unexpectedly at 10:30, she came into the living room and announced, “Honey, I think we should stay up until midnight and hear the church bells ring.”   In all the years they had lived in town, Mr. Webb could not remember hearing church bells at midnight on New Year’s Eve. As far as [More]

My 10-year-old, Donna, burst through the front door. “Mom, I made a new friend at school today,” she said. “Can she come over tomorrow?” Donna was a shy kid and I had been praying for her to make some friends to bring her out of her shell.   “Sure, honey, that sounds great,” I said, thinking back to my own best friend growing up.   Lillian and I lived across the street from each other in Washington Heights, New York. We met at age 10 too, and were instantly joined at the hip. Like my daughter, I was introverted, but [More]

My mom, nearly 80 years old, fell and suffered an injury. After several days in the hospital, she moved to a rehab center to begin a long recovery. As a registered nurse, I couldn’t help myself from closely observing everything the nurses did. Questioning them on every little detail. I didn’t want to get in their way, but who could look out for her better than I could?   The day after Mom moved into the center, I came to check on her. Her eyes were closed, her breathing shallow. Good, she’s sleeping, I thought. Mom had been in so much [More]

“She’s a good kid, and it’s only for a few months,” my friend said, pleading for me to let her cousin’s daughter from Washington live with me and my husband, Mark, while the girl attended her first semester at Oregon State. Normally I would have said yes, but it hadn’t been long since Mark’s heart attack, and we needed some peace and quiet. “I’ll think about it,” I said, hoping the girl would find other arrangements.   Mark’s heart attack had been quite an ordeal. I still shuddered every time I thought about receiving the call that my husband had [More]

My mother was forever doing me “favors.” One Sunday morning in June 1959 my mother walked into my room. “Surprise!” she said, proudly holding up a yellow dress with black and white stripes. “I made it just for you. What do you think?”   I bit my tongue. How could I tell Mom it was the most hideous dress I had ever seen? The too-intense colors, the gaudy rhinestone buttons, the shiny patent-leather belt, the hopelessly out-of-style billowy skirt.   “It’s perfect for church,” my mother continued blithely. “I wish someone had made a dress like this for me.”   [More]

Driving through an icy rainstorm, we were headed to a mountain resort for the weekend. Wipers slashing, shoulders tense, I focused on the winding six-lane highway ahead. A dozen cars zipped past us, but I held my speed down. With my wife, Kathy, and 13-year-old son, Jeff, in the car, I didn’t want to take any chances.   As I approached a sweeping right-hand curve, the car suddenly skidded. We spun across the highway, hurtling straight for the steel guardrail. I glimpsed the fear in Kathy’s and Jeff’s faces. I said a prayer and braced for the crash.   Read [More]

One of my former students passed away suddenly. Had I made a difference in his life?   I was enjoying my last few weeks of summer vacation before returning to my job as a high school teacher, when I received a terrible shock. While reading the local newspaper I discovered that a former student of mine, a 19-year-old named John Becker, had died of a serious illness.   I pictured him in my sign-language class—a bright youngster with wire-rim glasses and a baseball cap. His enthusiasm was surprising for a second-semester senior. He didn’t seem to have any hearing-impaired friends [More]

He thought he was lost. But thanks to God’s grace he was right where he needed to be all along.   I was part of a missionary group that traveled to Craiova, Romania, after the fall of communism. One thing I relished was my morning prayer time. I found an out-of-the-way overgrown cemetery, the perfect place for meditation. I memorized the path: Turn right at the yellow fence, go up the hill toward the smell of baking bread, turn left at the rose garden, pass the two barking German shepherds then cross the sidewalk stained with mulberries.   One morning, [More]

All she wanted was to make one child’s Christmas wishes come true. But was it too late?   Christmas was just a few weeks away, and I strolled through the department store, picking up a few items for someone special. Every year I pick a needy child’s wish list from the “Angel Tree” at my local mall, hoping to spread a little of the holiday spirit.   Wristwatch, check. A pair of athletic shoes, size six, check. Finally, I grabbed a yellow fleece jacket off the rack and brought everything to the register. It made me feel good picturing that [More]

A surprise scrap of love, found in a thrift-store bargain bin.   Aunt June was always there for me growing up. She wasn’t really my aunt—she was one of my mother’s best friends. But she was more like family. She saw me through dance recitals, first dates, and made sure I was well-polished in table manners and full of southern charm. I loved to watch her knit, her hands deftly gliding the needle in and out, turning mere yarn into beautiful things.   When I was pregnant with my first child, Aunt June told me she wanted to knit a [More]