“This shall be written for the generation to come; and the people who shall be created shall praise the Lord” (Psalm 102:18).
Please go to the front of your Bible and write in it.
Start by putting your own name.
Often, when I pick up the Bibles of friends to see what they have written in them, I’m chagrined to see they don’t even have their names.
Write in your Bible, friend. Please.
At Christmas 1973, my aunt Eren gave a new Bible to her mother, my wonderful grandmother Bessie Lowery McKeever. Grandma died in 1982, but not before marking up that Bible.
I now own it. It is a treasure beyond price.
One morning, I read something I had never seen before, that made the tears flow. (I was looking up the text above, and Grandma’s Bible was handy.)
In the margin beside Psalm 103:17, Grandma had written “One of Papa’s favorite verses.”
But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon those that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children.
I never knew Grandpa Lowery, her father. Many years ago, she told me he was a preacher of the Word, and a Baptist at that. As a little girl, Grandma would accompany him as he went out to preach. Other than that, I know nothing of him. Thanks to Grandma’s notes in the front of this Bible, I have his name: George Marion Lowery. And his wife, my great-grandmother, was Sarah Jane Blocker, whose birthdate is listed as January 1, 1852. (Grandma Bessie was born in 1895, was married in 1910, and became a mother the first time in 1912 when my dad Carl arrived, and for the twelfth time with the birth of Georgelle in 1936, six months after being widowed.)
In his lifetime, my dad presented me with two Bibles. The first came in 1948 when he asked me to “come go with me,” and we walked off the West Virginia mountain, and up the railroad tracks to the town of Sophia. Inside a variety store he asked the clerk to “Show us your Bibles.” He told me, “Pick you out a Bible.” I was stunned. This was the last thing I expected. I chose a black zippered beauty which I read every night for years. Then, many years later Dad gave me Grandma’s Bible. I’m still finding notes she left in the margins.
This is about people writing in their Bibles.