My first Bible

I was going through some files today and found this that I wrote several years ago:


"In 1956, when I was 5 years old, I received my first Bible from my grandmother, who also happened to be my Sunday School teacher at the time. On the inside page, in her handwriting she wrote, "given to Jackie by her grandmother and Sunday School teacher for learning the Ten Commandments." I remember that the prize for learning the Ten Commandments and saying them in front of the church was a beautiful, white, illustrated, King James "Holy Bible," with gilded pages that you could enclose by zipping the entire Bible shut with a shiny gold cross zipper pull. I also remember that I did memorize the Ten Commandments, but was too shy to get up in front of the entire church and say them, so my grandmother let me recite them to her and she awarded the Bible to me anyway. Inside were beautiful color pictures - and a place to record family births, deaths and marriages - and there in the center of that Bible, in my childish handwriting, is recorded the death of my parakeet Cindy and my cat Smoky… and my mother.I used this Bible throughout my childhood and well into my adult years, finally storing it away as it was literally falling to pieces. With the passage of time and much use, the white leather turned yellow, the gold cross zipper pull tarnished and all the gold wore off the pages. But I will always treasure it - and to me it is priceless. It reminds me of a godly heritage - of two Christian women who taught me about God and Jesus and the Bible. I treasure it because my grandmother gave it to me - and, because my mother used it, also. I remember my mother reading to me each morning before school from this same Bible. My mother had made notes in the margins and underlined passages and this makes it all the more special to me because she died when I was only 13. I do not remember a lot about her, but these notes and underlined passages give me some insight into who she was and what scriptures were meaningful to her.



Sometimes, I take it down off the shelf and carefully leaf through it, reading again what my grandmother wrote...what my mother underlined...the recorded births and deaths...and I am reminded again how much these two women both loved me - enough to teach me about their God and their Jesus. I treasure my little white tattered Bible because it represents three generations of women who read it and wrote in it and trusted in what it says."

As I sit here tonight and read this again, I am so thankful for a godly heritage...for a praying grandmother and a mother who desired to teach me about the Lord.