Just Read Your Bible, Honey


The front porch swing creaked with each push of my foot. I was thankful for the screened porch keeping out the Louisiana mosquitoes. I breathed in the moist summer morning air, as I glanced to the other end of the porch. She sat in her old white rocker with a cup of coffee and a book in her lap. This is how she began most mornings.

It was not her first loss, she had already lost siblings, both parents, and a husband. This loss was a bit more intense. This time she had lost a child. Of course, we were both grieving the same person, that link that made me her granddaughter.

There were so many questions I expected her in her great wisdom to answer. How could God let this happen? Didn’t we pray hard enough? Why, and what was it’s purpose? She’d respond and encourage me as best she could, but she’d always end it with “Just read your bible, Honey, every morning.”

She too struggled with this glitch in our family’s time line. Her thirty-nine year old daughter was not suppose to precede her own mother in death. This tragedy left an eleven year old grandson, and three young adult granddaughters motherless.

While sitting there with her, my mind raced with so many questions about life and death. She graciously admitted that God doesn’t share all the answers with us. But the Lord was still good and He had always comforted her when she needed Him. Being eighteen years old at the time, I didn’t fully understand this personal relationship with the Lord that she so often referenced.

She was an amazing woman, but what truly made her so was the lack of bitterness and her well guarded tongue. She rarely ever spoke about the wrongs she experienced. Even differences in religious beliefs didn’t present a barrier for showering genuine love on other people. She rarely was without a glowing smile or a hummed hymn under her breath. One of her favorites was Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…”

I’ve found that a loss of something or someone usually highlights those things we most take for granted. It was only after my Granny’s death, in my early thirties, when I realized I too hungered for what she had, an intimate daily relationship with Christ.

I’d watched her for years taking in God’s Word in early morning hours. “Just read your bible, Honey, everyday,” was the best advice I‘ve ever been given.

I hope your mornings will go a little something like this…a cup of coffee on a front porch with a Good Book!

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