The Evidence Is Everywhere that always results when you tell yourself that this life you have right here, right now, is all there is. I was confronted with the fact that in very significant ways, at street level, we don’t always live in a way consistent with what we confess to believe. One of my reasons for writing this book was to tell the story of the many people whom God brought my way in dark passages of their lives. (Of course, I have altered the details of their lives to protect their identities.) I wanted to do more than tell their sto- ries; I wanted to tell my story. But I wanted to do even more than that. I wanted to help you understand our stories and yours from the unique perspective of forever so you would begin to under- stand that the unshakable promise of the future grace of eternity does more than give you hope for the future. No, embedded in the promise of a future is the guarantee of grace for what you’re fac- ing right here, right now. You see, the God of eternity enters your story in the here and now, or he couldn’t guarantee your future. And that makes all the difference in the world. Perhaps you too have pockets of confusion. Maybe there are moments when you feel overwhelmed. Maybe you’re near some- one who has lost hope. Perhaps there’s a place in your life where you are looking for a reason to continue. Keep reading and you will find people like you, but you’ll find more. You’ll find the most beautiful story ever told. It is the only story big enough to make sense out of our little stories, and it is the only story that guaran- tees the one thing you and I daily need: grace. The book you are about to read is not written only out of my own experience or my parents’ wisdom. It looks at life based on the wisdom of the Book of books, the Bible. The Bible is God’s origin-to-destiny manual for living. There is no more reliable place to look to understand life, even at street level, than the Maker’s book, the Bible. God’s Book is so rich and deep that you can pull on the thread of one theme and gain more practical, life-shaping wisdom than you ever would have imagined possible. So in this book I’ve taken
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