MY MOTHER'S NOTE BOOK: The Travel Bible

Yesterday, I was surprised by the discovery that my father had my mother's Spanish Bible on the night stand with all the other Bibles and devotionals.

He told how this Bible was the one she carried around everywhere when they traveled and went to services with her, although she had other Bibles, one in each room.

As he tenderly and reverently fingered it he wistfully added how she had been such a helper to him and been so faithful in her service on the mission field even though it was tough and at times wished they were still there.
As in her other Bible of which I spoke of in a previous blog, she had notes, quotes, and poems, and various verses underlined in various passages, some in English and many in Spanish.  She had become very fluent in Spanish after many years on the mission field.

In Mother's own handwriting

"This is the life for me! I pray God will keep my feet to this fire.  I pray Christ will put up with me on the firing line of foreign missions.  I want only that He keep us where the action is, where things are tough, where grace is great.  Where things come hard, but they come of your own faith and work.  Where you stand, not on another's foundation, but on the one you laid.  Where you feed, not as a parasite upon the labors of others, but as one who treads the grain himself." " THIS IS WHAT I LIKE ABOUT MISSIONARY LIFE!"
Whether she borrowed the above quote or not, I am inclined to believe that she summed up in her own words that last quote.

 So here, her Bible is in my hands and I am reflecting on how battered and torn and well used it was to bring the gospel to those she encountered in her music and Bible classes or administering medication to those who came for physical help and to leave with spiritual help also.
Let me close by quoting the words from a song that I keep in my Bible:
Oh, may all who come behind us find us faithful,
May the fire of our devotion light their way.
May the footprints that we leave lead them to believe,
And the lives we live inspire them to obey.
Oh, may all who come behind us find us faithful.
After all our hopes and dreams have come and gone,
And our children sift through all we've left behind,
May the clues that they discover and the memories they uncover
Become the light that leads them to the road we each must find.

The heritage of faithfulness passed on through godly lives.