31 Days: Pathway to Perseverance - A Road Map of Remembrances

One of the most precious keepsakes I own is my mother's Bible. When I miss her, having the Bible she dearly loved floods my mind and my heart with memories. There is something so intimate about looking through those well-worn pages.  The lilt of her handwriting in a column, communicates my mother's mood, thoughts or gives a hint of what might have been happening at the time. It is like having a little spyglass into a time that was shared only between her and her Lord.

There are colors and highlights on well-loved passages. My mother believed in memorizing scripture until it went beyond imprinting on her mind, but was literally embossed on her heart. Some of those passages she shared with me during the hardest times of my life's journey.

I stroke the tiny crocheted flower bookmarks gifted by a friend. Notes with reminders about prayer requests, news to share with my dad when they were both at home again, and grocery lists are tucked between pages. A Bible doesn't seem a likely place for such everyday things, but for my mom, it was the one place she came to daily, sometimes many times in a day.  She would remember, she would find her hidden treasures there.

I wonder if I am doing my children a disservice, if I am depriving them of having a road map to follow like my mom left behind.  In this digital world where everything is fast and gigabytes of data are dumped to save space, another memory disappears.

I pour my heart out on pages that my children and grandchildren may never see. Passages dear to me are highlighted in colors of the rainbow on my cell phone app. How will they know the scriptures that lifted me in times that were bleak.  How will they know that like my mother, I too love Jesus and I bear the seal of his Word on my heart.

Maybe I will put these words between the pages of my mother's Bible so that future generations will have something tangible to hold to know that I followed the map and that the path is carved clearly for their lives too.

Remember.





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