My Grandmother’s Bible

I remember catching glimpses of my grandmother’s Bible as a child and  being in awe. It was so different than my own back then. As a child, my Bible was largely a mystery to me, something I used in church- a book with strange maps of foreign lands in the back. 

Her Bible had all the markings of a familiar and precious object. The cover was tattered, the edges of the pages worn smooth. Notations filled the margins.

I had seen other Bibles like this, mostly carried by the older women in my church. What made them love God’s word so?

This morning, I picked up my own Bible and found the morning’s reading landed on Psalm 91. 

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty…
  
Every verse of Psalm 91 is as familiar to me as the faces of my own children, not because I purposely memorized it, but because I have clung to it during the long dark nights of heartbreak and sorrow. 

And so I thought of my grandmother’s Bible and I knew…we often grow to love God’s word during the difficult seasons of this life.

I think that is the way it is supposed to work, at least. We all have a choice, of course. We can choose to cling or to turn, to draw near to God or near to something else that will leave us emptier in the end. 

I hope, by God’s grace, I forever choose to say with the Psalmist…

I will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” (Psalm 91:1b)