She sat with her hands gently folded laying on the open Bible in her lap. Her flowered dress hung down well below her knees. Her black laced shoes both sitting flatly on the floor side by side.

As I spoke she listened politely with the trace of a smile. Her round black face glistening in the morning sun streaming through the window. Deep black piercing eyes perched just above her reading glasses seemed to look straight into my very soul.

The Church I pastored was going door to door in the neighborhood where she lived asking if there was anyone or anything we could pray for. Almost every home invited us in and was very receptive. After praying for them, we always shared the message of the gospel and asked if anyone needed to receive Christ.

“I know what you are doing here in our community and I want to thank you. I have been talking to God a lot about it and asked him to please send help. Now here you are. God sent you here.”

“Yes, ma’am. I know he did.”

Then she began to tell me about her life and walk with God from a little girl to a woman in her eighties. “I seen some things. I seen good and I seen bad. But through it all God has kept me. And this book…” She patted her Bible like someone would an old trusted friend sitting close by. “…has been my guide and comfort every step of the way. This is God’s Word. I believe every word in this book. I do. And that has been enough for me all my life. It has been enough… more than enough. Do you understand me, sonny?” (that is not my name of course, but it was for this time)

We talked for a good part of the day. I told her how I met Jesus, about Denice and our children, about God calling me to pastor, about my walk with God, and on and on… we shared our lives, our experiences, our faith, our joys, as we sat there.

Throughout our conversation, she would unfold her hands and pat her Bible or gently touch its worn pages or fool with one of the numerous items stuck in it at various locations. Not a nervous act, but one of love, like one gently touching the person of their affection. Each time she did, it captured my attention and touched my heart.

It was like someone holding love letters from the love of their life long since gone. Holding them and the love their words conveyed close. The touch of each one somehow reminding them of the touch they once shared.

Tears welled up in my eyes as I observed the scene. It seemed almost sacred to me. She was so in love with Jesus. And her Bible was filled with his love letters to her.

A Sacred Encounter

As we talked she would intersperse our conversation with an uttered prayer. As she did she would pat her Bible. I could not close my eyes. I listened quietly and observed her every action as she spoke so naturally to God. There was no religious manner about her. Her prayers were like an ongoing conversation with someone she was taking a walk with. I was simply allowed to walk with them and hear their conversation.

There was no beautiful worship music playing, no powerful preaching of God’s Word… none of what we have in Church, and yet there was something we do not always have in Church — a consciousness of a Holy presence so real you are captured by it and unable to do anything at all. Tears flow from your eyes, yet you are unaware of crying. Every fiber of your being seems to stand still in recognition of the presence of the Holy. You are captured by the awesomeness of God’s presence.

I sat realizing I had been given a precious privilege, simply because God chose to do so. I thought to myself “I do not want to forget this moment. I want to remember it and the truth it’s opened to me… and what has been imparted to me during this time.”

I was busy pastoring and leading a church and also a family. Life was extremely busy, and then I planned this summer-long outreach. My type-A personality made sure I did not waste any time. And then God did this.

God arrested me, and through a precious elderly lady, reminded me of what truly matters, what the cross, the gospel, and church is all about — a relationship of love between a forgiven soul and God. A relationship like no other, for it is eternal and reaches to a place in the heart only God can go and dwell. Jesus was not only in her heart, but he was living in every word of God in the pages of her Bible. He was alive in an open Bible in the lap of a dear old woman.

She is in heaven now, her journey complete, her race run and won. I hope to see her once I get there. I wonder will she have her tattered old Bible. If she does, we will sit down and read it a spell.

The Word for Our Times

You and I, and the world around us, are facing difficult times now and ahead. The closer we get to the return of Jesus, the more fierce the enemy will work in world affairs, the more turmoil there will be upon the earth. Lies will be heralded as truth, and truth will be cursed as an evil lie. Right will become wrong, and wrong will be right. Believers in Jesus Christ will be challenged to be valiant in their faith or surrender it to what is acceptable in society. This should not be shocking to us as the Scriptures are very clear about it.

Where is our security and hope to be found? What is the source and place where peace dwells? Where is assurance for the days ahead? Where can courage and an unshakable confidence be found?

In an open Bible with tattered pages filled with words of love for those who know the One who wrote them and lives in every one of them. A love that cannot be explained in words of man, but can only be known and received, then returned from a soul at complete peace and rest in that love. A soul with an open Bible.