The Bible tells of streets paved with gold and how God lights up the whole place. There will be no more sorrow nor tears, and everyone will be praising God.

I don't care so much about gold streets, but I think I will be glad to meet my first pa, and I want to tell Jesus how glad I am that He died on the cross for me.

"Pa, I don't do that anymore." "No, but you did, and you are still my child, so I think it is the same way with God. He wants us to hang on that tight, and just like sometimes you wandered away from me or your mor, we do the same with God, and He uses the bad things to get our attention and bring us back to him."

"If you are ever lost in the woods, stay in one place, and I will find you."

Her father might as well have been standing behind her, she heard his voice so clearly. After banging into one tree after another, falling flat after tripping over a stump on the ground, and nearly losing an eye to a broken branch, she heeded her father's long-ago advice.

"Martin Luther had something to say about this. He said he couldn't stop the birds from flying over his head, but he could keep them from nesting in his hair."

The silence of a land shrouded in new snow struck her ears, her breathing and the hiss of the skis the only sounds.