This Old Bible

  While dusting the night stand table beside my bed today, I move my mother’s old Bible. This Bible is very special to me. After my mother passed away in 1998, I used this Bible to read God’s word all the way from Genesis to Revelation’s. It wasn’t easy, but as I read, it gave me a sense of what my mother was doing and feeling, sort of her diary to God. She dated each daily reading so I would read as far as she did and believe me, some days she read a long way. I also read the small footnotes in the corners where she would add the weather, a birthday, a special phone call….My mother was not alone in her day, for she had the company of her Lord. Her faith was strong! Her love for her children was strong but her life was week. I miss my mother… and this old Bible, every time I open it, will always give me that same feeling I get reading God’s words and my mothers on the same page… LOVE!
For my husband’s birthday recently, his daughters and I gave him a nice Bible with his name engraved on the front cover. He had mentioned to me that he reads an old paper bible he keeps in his work truck and on days that he sits out under a tree in his truck, waiting for a crew to fix something on the job, he just picks a chapter and reads for a spell. So, when he opened his birthday present, he told me that he never had a Bible of his very own. One that wasn’t handed down, or shared. He is reading that Bible every night now. He may only read a chapter or a few verses, but something tells me that he will finish reading all the way through one day, absorbing God’s word like a sponge. As I see him open his Bible and get in a quiet time, I feel that feeling I get with this old Bible of mom’s… LOVE!
My oldest daughter keeps a Bible at work and there have been days that I go into her work area to visit and I can see that Bible laying on the counter or nearby on her work station and I know she has been reading and studying God’s word. What an over whelming feeling I get to see that my child wants to know God’s word. I get that feeling in my heart each time, like the feeling I get when I open this old Bible of moms… LOVE!
Our granddaughter, who is three and a half, came to see her Nana a couple of weeks ago. She wanted to show me something! She had been to the bookstore with her mother and picked out her very own Bible. She loves books! She loves the color Pink! She had picked out a beautiful, leather, Pink Bible and it had her name engraved on the front cover. The excitement I saw in her eyes and the joy I heard in her little voice as she took the pink Bible out of the box, carefully showing me, and telling me all about it made my heart swell. I know she is just a little child, but her mother is raising her to know God. Seeing that, and knowing that, gives me the same feeling in my heart that this old Bible of mothers gives me each time I open it….love!