Life's Book

My first Bible is in the drawer in the other room.  Within those pages unleashed by a zipper around the black cover are pictures of memorable moments in Scriptural history and all the words of Jesus highlighted in red.  I had no idea that it would be kept for a life time and that it would be read in many different forms through all these years.  It became the book which was always with me.  There were times when I read it more than other times, but it was a book which always got a measure of reading every year. 

In a way it became a companion, a guide, a source of hope and wisdom, and a window opened toward heaven.  As a young boy whose father died too early, I looked in it for answers to questions which could not be answered.  And as old man who only remembers the boy, I know I have gone to it a thousand times when life brought to my door things too difficult to understand, or when the dark clouds swirled with such intensity that I was sure to be overwhelmed.  I learned to go to it when I did not know what to do and to make it a part of my life in those moments when everything seemed to be staying where it was supposed to be.  It truly has been and continues to be the book for all seasons.    

What remains surprising through all the years of becoming familiar with its words is the way the Word of the Lord is sometimes whispered and sometimes thundered through its pages.  A verse or two read so often that it has become memorized can suddenly say something never considered in the past. It is a living Word.  It is a Word which has been like food and drink, or maybe bread and wine all these years.  I am grateful someone placed the first one in my hands as a boy and that the grace of God has kept me searching its pages deep into this season of the gray hair.