■ by Betty Steele Everett


ANOTHER WOMAN’S BIBLE I


WOULD NEVER have been reading another woman’s Bible if I hadn’t gotten rushed that Tuesday morning and forgotten my own.


“Oh,” I moaned, “here I am at a Bible study and forgot my Bible!”


“No problem.” The leader nodded to a shelf at the far end of the room. “There are a couple there. Just borrow one.” She gave me a teasing grin. “And don’t forget yours next week.”


I chose a Bible and took it back to the table where the others were gathering. Its black cover was scuffed, the words “Holy Bible” were faded, and some of the gold letters had tiny scratches.


Curious, I opened it and saw a name written inside the cover. It was a woman I had not known well—just someone I greeted on Sunday mornings. She was much older than I am, a longtime mem- ber of the church, and had recently died well into her ninth decade. Her Bible had been donated to the church and placed in this room.


As the others came in, I found myself staying out of the conversations that swirled around me before we got started. Instead, I was looking through this other woman’s Bible.


The worn cover told me this was a much-used and well-loved book, as did the inside pages. The paper was a good grade, and many verses had been marked with different colors of ink. I wondered, Did each color have its own meaning for her?


The margins were dotted with nota- tions. Some were simply question marks, which I took to mean the reader was not sure about a verse’s meaning. I was sure she would have asked someone. Other notes were cross references to other scriptures. There were also notes about answered prayers.


A couple of papers lay between some pages. One contained a poem; another had a quote from a well-known preacher. I also found a cross-shaped bookmark. These had all been important for the Bible’s owner, but apparently passed over by her family going through her things. When we started the study, I quickly found the place in this borrowed Bible. This passage had a note in the margin that gave me an idea to share. The other woman’s Bible and I started a good dis- cussion that day.


“I never thought of it that way,” one woman said. “I’ll be praying about it.”


When the session was over, I sat, still holding the borrowed Bible. It told me so much about someone I had not known. It told me she was a Christian who read God’s Word regularly and meditated on its meaning.


I thought of my own Bible at home, which I had forgotten to bring. What would it say about me to a person casu- ally picking it up?


As a child I had been punished for writing in a book and had never done it since, so the pages of my Bible were still as clean as new. There were no notes in the margins, or passages marked that were special to me. To a stranger, my Bible would look like an unimportant part of my life.


“You coming?” The leader’s voice broke into my thoughts, and I realized everyone else had left. “Keep that Bible if you want. We have more.”


I shook my head as I carried the other woman’s Bible back to the shelf. “No, thanks. I’ve got a good Bible at home that needs some attention. I want to leave this one right here for someone else to find.”


Betty Steele Everett lives in Defiance, Ohio. EVANGEL • AUG 2010 19


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32