All the Answers

I remember opening my dad’s Bible when I was a child. His mother gave it to him, and I suppose it was the Bible he used as a teenager and young adult. Her life was cut tragically short. She died when he was only 17, and she was sick for most of his childhood. She wrote a simple inscription inside, one that made an impression on me. I’ve never forgotten her old fashioned scrawl across the inside cover: Tommy, always remember that all the answers can be found in this book.

I picture her sometimes, a mother of three boys who was in and out of hospitals for so many years, fighting endlessly against cancer at a time when effective treatments were still limited. I’ve even pictured her, thin and bony, body ravaged by medical interventions that would not save her in the end, knowing that she was in trouble. I see her sitting down with a brand new, black Bible for her youngest son, picking up a nearby pencil, and writing these profound words. They are words that carry an even deeper meaning when I consider that they were likely written by a dying woman.

How can we explain this? A woman who knew her future plans and dreams on this earth would never be, a woman who saw other mothers around her living lives free of the fear of imminent death, a woman who was looking down the yawning throat of eternity…how could she, of all people, write such a profoundly faithful truth to her son? The answer is, as she wrote so true, in the book.

In God’s word we learn His character, His power, and the strength of His good will. These are truths she carried from childhood, and when she was faced with her own mortality, when she began to realize that her life really was just a vapor, here today and gone tomorrow, God began to teach her who He is in a new and deeply soul-altering way. She had real truth to hand to her son, truth that would answer the deepest questions he might have in the disorienting wake of his precious mother’s death. And she knew that this book also contained answers that would sustain him all the way through his own quickly passing life and his struggles with mortality. She knew that this book would hand him hope for life everlasting, peace in the darkest nights, joy when tears of grief won’t stop flowing, and faith that would keep him praising the God who has numbered each of our days. When she, dying woman, sat down to pour this simple, deep truth onto the page, she knew, maybe more than she ever had before, that Jesus Christ is the answer.

A few days ago, our thirteen year old told us about a psalm of lament they had studied in Sunday school. She had a slightly shaky start to her eighth grade year, and she sat at the kitchen counter and mused about how that psalm was just perfect for someone who is going through hard times. She half grinned as if to indicate that she is that person. She ended her week with questions, feeling a bit lost, and when she studied God’s word with a faithful teacher and her teenaged friends, what did she find but the truth of God spelled out in front of her. As I took in her sweet half-grin and thought about how big things can seem in life at 13, I pictured her again, my grandmother, writing wise words to her baby boy. I felt tears welling up as I handed this truth to my own baby: Remember that the Bible has all the answers.

She nodded in agreement.

Did my dad pick up his black Bible the day after his mother’s funeral when he was just a tender 17 year old, search through it and find everything he wanted to know about why his mother couldn’t live to a ripe old age? Probably not, but He did find the truths about God that he needed to know: everything He does is good and right. Everything He does is for a purpose. These are the very truths his mother was clinging to when she wrote what she had learned, soul-deep.

She lives today. She sees the purpose in all of her years of sickness. In the heartbreak of her sons. In the suffering she endured. And she will never know another moment of pain. The truth was right in front of her, in a brand new black Bible. She recognized it, by the grace of God. She lived it, by His will. And she passed the truth to her youngest boy, my father, who passed it to me, and I so long to be faithful in passing it to my own children. He is a loving God who delights in giving good things, like hope, like truth, like wisdom, to His children. Will we recognize the truth and give our children the precious gift of this simple message? Remember, all the answers can be found in this book.

His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 2 Peter 1:3