Innehållsförteckning för July 2016 från Guideposts

Folks tell us they love Guideposts because they identify with the stories. That goes for me too, especially this issue. The Message of Ben-Hur. I met author Carol Wallace (Executive Editor Rick Hamlin’s better half) nearly 30 years ago and was duly impressed that she cowrote The Official Preppy Handbook and that her greatgreat-grandfather wrote Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Road-Trip Respite, about a mother-daughter tour photographing vintage highway rest stops (I’m not kidding), inspired memories of my own childhood vacations. Donna Tobin Smith’s The Perfect Answer, about slowly losing her father to Alzheimer’s, reminded me of my mother’s last days and that part of us the disease can’t destroy. In A Sign From Above, Gail Bindewald wonders if she can survive without exercise. I have the same worry.…

‘‘The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.” novelist PAULO COELHO “Hope is seeing a light at the end of the tunnel; faith is believing it is not a train.” submitted by Guideposts reader DEBBIE GENO, of St. Peters, Missouri “God found Gideon in a hole, Joseph in a prison, Daniel in a lion’s den. Next time you feel unqualified to be used by God, remember: He tends to recruit from the pit, not the pedestal.” author and motivational speaker JON ACUFF “A word to the wise: Without real spiritual mentoring, too much freedom can lead to the soul’s decay. And a word to the young artists: A real friend or mentor…cares for your soul.” the late singer and songwriter PRINCE at his Rock and Roll Hall…

We Keenan siblings always stick together. That was never more true than when my sister Mary was dying of cancer. She lived in Austria, thousands of miles away from the rest of us, but we five juggled plane tickets and time off so that Mary would rarely be without one of us. I was the last sibling scheduled to go. I needed to see Mary, to hold her hand, perhaps for the last time. Fifteen minutes before my flight to Vienna, though, I got the call—Mary had passed away. How I had wanted to have that moment with my sister, to comfort her in her final hours. Instead, I spent a week in Austria securing her death certificate, making arrangements with the crematorium, and closing out her affairs before bringing…

NOT LONG AGO, I STOOD IN AN art gallery in Ann Arbor, Michigan, surrounded by the work of current and former prison inmates. There were paintings, collages and sculptures. But I wasn’t there just for the art. I was there because of the artists. I had helped to bring these works of art to this gallery and I knew intimately what each one was about. The exhibit was part of a prison-arts initiative I led at the University of Michigan, where I teach occasionally. With my help, university students worked with inmates, teaching them how to express their feelings. The results exhibited in the gallery were gut-wrenching. They were also healing for me. Some of the artwork emerged from a class I taught called the Atonement Project, a name I…

A Hero’s Heroes Bryan Anderson, who is featured on our cover this month (page 32), is an inspiration to many. See who inspires him in our exclusive video. guideposts.org/banderson Did You Know… …that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence on a laptop? And that one U.S. president was born on the Fourth of July and three others died on Independence Day? Find more fascinating July Fourth facts at guideposts.org/july4facts Get Your Kicks If Ryann Ford’s photographs of vintage rest stops (page 8) make you want to hit the road, take a virtual tour of Route 66 with our exclusive photos. guideposts.org/route66 Teatime Visit a charming teahouse and uncover the secrets brewing inside in our exclusive interview with author Susan Page Davis of Tearoom Mysteries, Guideposts’ newest book series. guideposts.org/teamys…

FAMOUS WORDS My friend Martha told me about a gift she gave to her kids for their sixteenth birthdays: a collection of advice from their role models. Wouldn’t it be an awesome gift for my daughter Sarah Rose’s upcoming twenty-first birthday? Starting six months out, I sent a letter and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to everyone I thought she’d like to hear from. Fortunately she was away at college, so she didn’t see the influx of mail. She received letters from a former first lady, a cooking-show host, a Supreme Court justice, a renowned primatologist, a movie star, a pro football player. Several members of the British royal family had their assistants write letters proclaiming that they were too busy to write—but the letters were on Buckingham Palace stationery. Some…

ASK MY FRIENDS TO DESCRIBE ME and the first thing they’ll tell you is: Bryan loves to go fast. Yep, I’m a speed junkie. I love snowboarding. Downhill skateboarding—sitting on my board and rocketing down steep hills at 60 miles per hour. I drive a sports car. I own a motorcycle. I even make friends fast. I travel a lot and love meeting people and hearing their stories. Basically, whatever I do, I make it fun and I do it at top speed. Here’s one description you won’t hear from my friends: triple-amputee veteran of the Iraq War. That description is accurate—up to a point. Yes, I fought in Iraq. I was wounded in an IED blast. And I lost both of my legs and my left hand. But none…

MY FATHER, RODDIE Edmonds, was outgoing yet humble, not the type to go on about himself. The only one he ever bragged on was God (I think that’s a big part of why I became a pastor—Dad’s love of God and all he could do in your life). Dad and I were close. Because I knew what mattered to him—his family, his fellow man, his country and his faith—I knew everything that was important about him. Or so I thought. One day in 2006, my daughter Lauren came home from college and said she had to do a project on a family story for her history class. “I told everyone that Papaw was a POW in World War II, and they said, ‘That’s the story!’ What do you think?” I…

A SPIRITUAL MEDICINE CABINET I’ve long been a fan of Norman Vincent Peale’s Thought Conditioners, a set of 40 Scripture passages accompanied by uplifting messages. In it, Dr. Peale recommends memorizing the verses, so that you’ll have the right one when needed, like filling a spiritual medicine cabinet. I’m glad I took his advice. In 2001, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had a successful mastectomy but I wasn’t a good candidate for chemo. I took tamoxifen instead and gave my trouble to God—just as Dr. Peale suggests in explaining Ephesians 6:13. Since then I’ve remained cancer free, but I still lean on Thought Conditioners. These verses are precious. HELEN FIELDS SWAFFORD Marietta, Georgia Get a free copy of Thought Conditioners at guideposts.org/spirit-lifters. FINDING OLD FRIENDS On April 1,…

THIS AUGUST, NEARLY 60 YEARS after MGM’s blockbuster movie, a new version of Ben-Hur, starring Jack Huston and Morgan Freeman, will reach theaters. As with a lot of major studio releases, there will be a book to accompany it, a novel with a picture of Ben-Hur himself in a chariot on the cover. But what’s unusual is that this novel was originally written in 1880. As it happens, the author was my great-great-grandfather, Lew Wallace, and I wrote this contemporary version of his novel. Along the way, I found out a great deal about my ancestor, how he came to write his masterpiece, and how it defined his faith. As a little girl, I was very proud of Lew. He had been a Union general in the Civil War. He…

MOMENTS OF DESTINY. A rendezvous with fate that you could not possibly orchestrate on your own. A door will open, a path made clear, and God’s best for you will be within your grasp. I’m sure you’ve all had them. Let me tell you about a few from my life. As a kid I wanted to be a great singer, a rock star with gold records and stadiums full of fans. What took a while was figuring out just what my voice could do. Or not do. At first I tried to be the next Little Richard. I practiced until I had the songs and the moves down. I unveiled them at a school talent show, wailing at the top of my lungs. The next morning I could barely speak.…

DOUBLE THE SUMMER FUN “I wish we could stay another week,” my six-year-old son, Colin, said with a groan on the last day of our vacation. I didn’t blame him. We looked forward to our annual week at the Jersey Shore all year. Thirteen of us—my mom, my siblings, our spouses and kids—rented the second floor of a large summerhouse. The cousins had fun camping out together in the living room with their sleeping bags. We all played board games and spent a lot of time on the beach. I would have loved to have another week there too. “Sorry, buddy,” I told Colin, “but we can’t afford it.” “What if I prayed for it?” he asked. “You can pray for anything you want,” I told him, heading for the…