Daddy’s Little Bible

I am take a writing class and this is the assignment we were given to write on for this week...

Explore Sentimental Value

A threadbare T-shirt. A stained cookbook. A folded 1989 Yankees ticket. We all refuse to part with items that hold sentimental value. Write about something you own that would be trash to another person. Delve beyond mere memories and explore what—the time, the people, the circumstances—that item represents. Write five hundred words. 

Here is what I wrote...                                          

                                       ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~                                       

The Lord bless you

and keep you;

the Lord make his face shine on you

and be gracious to you;

the Lord turn his face toward you

and give you peace.”
Numbers 6:24-26 

                                     

I am walking around my home filled with what may appear to others as worthless objects. People who view some of these articles with questioning might be spot on in their appraisal of my treasures. The task at hand is for me to pick a favorite. The item should add visually to the area where it is displayed. It must appeal to my sentimentality. Searching for the perfect item, I spy my father’s little Bible. I remember my father’s words, “Chickie, I got this Bible for perfect attendance in Sunday school.” I could tell I was supposed to be impressed, but I was only four at the time. The Bible has the regular black leather cover that all Bibles had in those days. The words on the cover printed gold say, “Holy Bible,” and the words that I always fancied when I looked at it, his name, “Milton F. Hambly.”

My great-grandmother told me that God had written the Bible. “It was very nice of God to put his name on it. The inscription on the inside says that it was presented on January 9, 1930 when my father was nine. It turns out that God was not the official presenter of that Bible; it was awarded by a “G.H. Bailey, Supt.”

When I call this Bible a "small Bible", I am not exaggerating. The actual pages measure a mere three and a half by six inches. Still, it houses the entire Bible. It was in much better shape in those days. In book age it was just under twenty years old. Now the front cover is detached and the spine is loose. The gold letters still name it and its owner nicely. It has two hundred thirty pages with writing so tiny that even with glasses I need a magnification. This Bible’s unique feature is that after every thirty pages there is a colored illustration of the scripture being covered.

I grew up Catholic, and we did not read the Bible as much as children following other religions did. Still I knew a lot about the stories in the Bible. My great-grandmother lived with us. She was bed ridden, and mother took care of her. Grammie Hambly loved to have me climb up on her bed. There she told me the stories of the patriarchs, prophets, and kings of those long past days. I was fascinated. Later, after Grammie was gone, my mother would look at the illustrations with me and we would talk about them. Among other wonderful pictures, I still see Absalom hanging by his tresses from a tree, Samuel on his sleeping mat being called by God, and Jesus’ miracle of feeding the crowd.

This Bible is tattered. It was well used by my little hands searching out the artwork with Grammie and later with my mother. The times I spent as a child over this precious book with the adults in my life are part of me. Dad’s little Bible now sits proudly on the top of a pyramid stack of Bibles belonging to forbears on my family tree. When I look at it I feel the passing of the years and the importance of things that hands long gone have touched. Who we become in the future is caused by what we cherish from the past and present. When God is a part of that we have His face shining upon us and being gracious to us through the generations.

Corinne Mustafa
September, 2013